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"gnostic" Definitions
  1. connected with knowledge, especially mystical knowledge (= knowledge of spiritual things discovered through prayer rather than through reason and the senses)
  2. Gnostic connected with Gnosticism
"gnostic" Synonyms
keen brilliant perceptive astute clever smart penetrating piercing shrewd brainy canny fast judicious supersmart enlightened knowledgeable quick rational sapient bright
"gnostic" Antonyms
obtuse dim dull stupid fatuous ignorant senseless doltish foolish unperceptive chowderheaded dopey lamebrain softheaded unsmart bonehead chuckleheaded simple unbrilliant woodenheaded

1000 Sentences With "gnostic"

How to use gnostic in a sentence? Find typical usage patterns (collocations)/phrases/context for "gnostic" and check conjugation/comparative form for "gnostic". Mastering all the usages of "gnostic" from sentence examples published by news publications.

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The title right now is a working title, but its Gnostic Vampire.
There is no need to be a Gnostic to see the materialism that dominates our priorities.
Gnostic thinking takes us to a privileged ontological realm: the state of perfection that precedes actualization.
On Disc 7, the Gnostic Trio (harp, guitar, vibraphone) elevates and aerates Mr. Zorn's cyclical compositions.
I am his fortune-teller, a cautious gnostic with a serpent's tongue, to praise & to spit on.
About its continued mixing of gnostic and biblical imagery, but without a lot to say about either.
Over quiet, burbling, sunbaked guitar arpeggios, he recites gnostic puzzles and surreal rustic parables in a deep, gentle monotone.
But is Jones a Richard Dawkins-esque scoffer or a would-be founder of a Gnostic alternative to Christianity?
" And there are a few low-calorie gnostic pronouncements: "We need to think inwards, and to think from within.
Anyone who claims to have gnostic wisdom about John Kelly's future in the White House should prepare to be embarrassed.
Even so, it took many years for the familiar New Testament canon to edge out rival Gnostic and Manichaean writings.
An intentionally posthumous book, like the British poet Geoffrey Hill's The Book of Baruch by the Gnostic Justin, is something else altogether.
In some old texts, such as the Gnostic Gospels, her close relationship with Jesus is a source of tension with other disciples.
" A voice like Mr. Green's, the narrator continues, "bears the weight of a gnostic, transformative desire to be done with the world.
By the fourth century, Gnostic texts depicting her spiritual leadership were deemed heretical and excluded from the New Testament canon, says Sahlin.
The Book of Baruch by the Gnostic Justin isn't easy going for the casual reader, peppered as it is with unfamiliar proper names and allusions.
The relatively calm sensibility of The Gnostic Trio — one of Mr. Zorn's many, many other projects — made an appearance in the fourth and 14th studies.
The Gospel of Mary, a Gnostic text from the early second century, suggests that Jesus entrusted Mary Magdalene to provide religious instruction to his disciples.
"World, you make me nervous," lead vocalist Alex Maas sings, turning the rack into something stranger, almost a hymn, hovering between the gnostic and agnostic.
The Book of Baruch by the Gnostic Justin by Geoffrey Hill (2019) is published by Oxford University Press and is available from Amazon and other online retailers.
Yet whether it is useful, given the absence from all of them of a malevolent demiurge and a transcendent God, to call them "Gnostic" is less certain.
Lahger, who is also known online by the names "Old Hag" and "Witch in the Woods," occasionally includes allusions to her and her husband's Gnostic spiritual practice, Thursatrú.
This immersive poetry collection proceeds like a mixtape or a gnostic gospel as it follows the titular crew's coming of age in East Harlem in the early nineties.
But while O'Connell suggestively quotes Rilke, St. Augustine, Gnostic texts and Hannah Arendt in critiquing techno-utopians, he never goes very deep into understanding the pathology driving them.
As a series, then, Westworld is a more a gnostic tangle about identity and purpose — or the lack thereof, given its bleak outlook — than a mystery to be solved.
Midway through the novel, Joe Harris comes back in spirit when his cover of "Bird in God's Garden"—"a neo-pseudo-Sufi-hippie-Gnostic number"—becomes an unexpected hit.
Like members of a gnostic cult, we long to enter the next transcendent phase of our development, shedding our bodies and leaving them behind, along with our sins and troubles.
Still, Buddhism continues to have an alien aura, as if it were an "entirely otherworldly religion with a gnostic distaste for the worldly order," as the scholar Ian Harris has written.
Just as his characters plunge through constructed realities in quest of truer selves, so do we, as DeLillo's readers, find in his pages something akin to insight of a gnostic order.
Lehmann shows that a specifically Protestant, vaguely gnostic materialism has always animated American life, saturating the lowly world of objects with the sanctity of higher, heavenly purpose, even unto our time.
The Quran is more ecumenical, dipping into the rich mélange of Middle Eastern traditions contained in the apocryphal and "gnostic" gospels and still very much alive in the popular lore of Eastern Christianity.
In our conversations, he mentioned the Gnostic Gospels, Lurianic Kabbalah, books of Hindu philosophy, Carl Jung's "Answer to Job," and Gershom Scholem's biography of Sabbatai Sevi, a self-proclaimed Messiah of the seventeenth century.
LOS ANGELES — On a rainy March evening, the singer-songwriter Tamaryn waited for a gnostic priest to begin his lecture on the transformative power of tarot at a small lodge in the Hollywood Hills.
Hill worked on The Book of Baruch by the Gnostic Justin for several years before his death, planning no conclusion; the book would simply consist of as many sections as he had completed in his life.
The difference, I think, isn't just that Soutine's immanence, his spirit in the flesh, holds more appeal for us than Albright's neo-Platonic — or even gnostic — message that our true home is a distant spiritual otherworld.
BELLY (Wednesday and Thursday) After playing in Throwing Muses and the Breeders, Tanya Donelly formed Belly, an alt-rock foursome that scored its biggest hit with "Feed the Tree," the gnostic first single from the group's debut album.
Yes. One of the first things I heard when I met my wife was about these guys that do gnostic saunas, getting together in the evening to practise occult magick while having a sauna and getting together to jam.
It was this realization that led the artist to CLITERACY, and on to OVER AND OVER AND OVER, where Wallace draws on pop culture and spirituality, remixing hip-hop lyrics and ancient Gnostic manuscripts, to speak power to the female divine.
One important qualifier, appropriate to the week of Halloween, is that the decline of Christian institutions and the weakening of Christian affiliation may be clearing space for post-Christian spiritualities — pantheist, gnostic, syncretist, pagan — rather than a New Atheist sort of godlessness.
Once he moved to Finland, he challenged his very British sensibilities and was soon embracing the gnostic saunas and woodland rituals that paved the way for a musical project that was as in touch with the earth beneath him as the cosmos above.
" Secular ideologies were all "gnostic" creeds, each a perversion of the old faith but curiously like it, with its own mythology, its prophets and priests, its holy scripture spelled out in Diderot and D'Alembert's Encyclopédie , Marx's "Das Kapital," and other "new korans.
Eventually, his studies led him to paganism, Gnostic Christianity, Taoist energy practices and esoteric Judaism—and Echols found himself captivated by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the 19th-century occult group whose members included W.B. Yeats, Bram Stoker and Arthur Conan Doyle.
IN 290, BOB DYLAN visited Andy Warhol's Factory studio in Midtown Manhattan and sat — saturnine, gnostic, impossibly young — for a Screen Test, one of the short film portraits Warhol started making in 21 of a number of celebrities, including Dennis Hopper and Edie Sedgwick.
Fueled by her intellect, and fortunate to have access to the Gnostic Gospels — 52 first-century or second-century Christian texts unearthed in 1945 by an Egyptian Arab farmer digging for fertilizer an hour's drive from ancient Thebes — Pagels, bravely, forthrightly and with a characteristic minimum of fuss, cracks herself ajar.
What procrastination betrays is above all an anxiety of creation: It pains us unbearably to realize that, for all our good intentions, we are agents of degradation, that instead of creating something that stays whole and incorruptible, we by our very doing make it "perishable and mortal," in the words of the Gnostic author of the Gospel of Philip.
" To quote Robert Duncan's The H.D. Book (Donahue is surely an inheritor of H.D.'s gnostic modernism), any given landscape in Dark Church, from Texas to Turkey, "is a multiple image, in which the historical and the personal past, along with the divine world, the world of theosophical and of poetic imagination, may participate in the immediate scene.
But in between secularism and traditionalism lies the most American approach to matters of faith: a religious individualism that blurs the line between the God out there and the God Within, a gnostic spirituality that constantly promises access to a secret and personalized wisdom, a gospel of health and wealth that insists that the true spiritual adept will find both happiness and money, a do-it-yourself form of faith that encourages syncretism and relativism and the pursuit of "your truth" (to borrow one of Oprah's Golden Globes phrases) in defiance of the dogmatic and the skeptical alike.
The Gnostic Church of France () is a neo-Gnostic Christian organisation formed by Jules Doinel in 1890, in France. It is the first Gnostic church in modern times.
Ptolemy the Gnostic, or Ptolemaeus Gnosticus, was a disciple of the Gnostic teacher Valentinius and is known for the Letter to Flora, an epistle he wrote to a wealthy woman named Flora, herself not a gnostic.
In context of Gnostic beliefs, Gnostic writings use Mary to illustrate a disciple's spiritual relationship with Jesus, making any physical relationship irrelevant.
Established in 1953 by Richard Duc de Palatine in England under the name 'the Pre-nicene Gnostic Catholic Church', the Ecclesia Gnostica (Latin: "Church of Gnosis" or "Gnostic Church") is said to represent 'the English Gnostic tradition', although it has ties to, and has been influenced by, the French Gnostic church tradition. It is affiliated with the Gnostic Society, an organization dedicated to the study of Gnosticism. The presiding bishop is the Rt. Rev. Stephan A. Hoeller, who has written extensively on Gnosticism.
For further information on this edition and subsequent reprints, see More recently, Michael Bertiaux described a system called Angelic Gematria in his The Voudon Gnostic Workbook (1989),Bertiaux, Michael. The Voudon Gnostic Workbook. Magickal Childe, 1989. . Republished as The Voudon Gnostic Workbook: Expanded Edition, p. 82.
The Gnostic Preludes (subtitled Music of Splendor) is an album composed by John Zorn and released on the Tzadik label in March 2012.Tzadik Catalogue: The Gnostic Preludes It was the first album by Carol Emanuel, Bill Frisell, and Kenny Wollesen who became known as The Gnostic Trio.
John the Evangelist is claimed as a Gnostic by some Gnostic interpreters,Elaine Pagels, The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis. Heracleon's Commentary on John. Nashville: SBL Monograph Series 17, 1973 as is even St. Paul. Most of the literature from this category is known to us through the Nag Hammadi Library.
It shows no dependence on canonical texts, and was probably written in the first half of the 2nd century. It has Gnostic affinities but cannot be attributed to any Gnostic sect, and some scholars rule that it is not Gnostic at all."James, Apocryphal Epistle of." Cross, F. L., ed.
In Sufism, Iblis rules the material world in a manner that resembles the Gnostic Demiurge. The Quran, like Gnostic cosmology, makes a sharp distinction between this world and the afterlife. God is commonly thought of as being beyond human comprehension. In some Islamic schools of thought, somehow identifiable with the Gnostic Monad.
The Treatise on the Resurrection is an ancient Gnostic or quasi-Gnostic Christian text which was found at Nag Hammadi, Egypt. It is also sometimes referred to as "The Letter to Rheginos" because it is a letter responding to questions about the resurrection posed by Rheginos, who may have been a non- Gnostic Christian.
Gnostic ideas found a Jewish variation in the mystical study of Kabbalah. Many core Gnostic ideas reappear in Kabbalah, where they are used for dramatically reinterpreting earlier Jewish sources according to this new system.Scholem, Gershom Origins of the Kabbalah, 1962. The Kabbalists originated in 13th-century Provence, which was at that time also the center of the Gnostic Cathars.
It is by proxy frequently associated with the Gnostic Demiurge.
Adapted from a story from the Gnostic text Pistis Sophia.
G.C.; Catholic Gnostic Church). Then it changed again becoming the (E.G.U.; Universal Gnostic Church) and became the official church of Papus’ Martinist Order. The patriarch Bricaud claimed the spiritual heritage of John of Patmos.
The Gnostic Society Library, Gnostic Scriptures and Fragments, The Hymn of the Pearl - The Acts of Thomas It is believed to have been written in the 2nd century or even possibly the 1st century.
The Serpent's Curse follows a storyline related to the Gnostic Gospels.
The O.T.O.A. "tradition" comes from the gnostic voudon, as practiced in secret societies. There, a synthesis was purportedly developed between European gnostic-hermetic currents, being the heritage of the ancient western initiatic tradition, and Haitian metaphysics. Within the group, the O.T.O.A. works through the Monastery of the Seven Rays system. Both of these organizations cooperate with the gnostic church Ecclesia Gnostica Spiritualis.
This passage contains a number of commands addressed to Paul's co-worker (in the second person) about how one to teach or relate to those in disputes pertaining heresy. The teaching of Paul was regarded authoritative by Gnostic and anti-Gnostic groups alike in the second century, but this epistle stands out firmly and becomes a basis for anti-Gnostic positions.
The Mandaeans are an ancient Gnostic sect that have survived to this day and are found today in Iraq. Their namesake owes to their following John the Baptist and in that country, they have about five thousand followers. A number of ecclesiastical bodies that think of themselves as Gnostic have set up or re-founded since World War II, including the Ecclesia Gnostica, Apostolic Johannite Church, Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the Gnostic Church of France, the Thomasine Church, the Alexandrian Gnostic Church, the North American College of Gnostic Bishops, and the Universal Gnosticism of Samael Aun Weor. A number of 19th-century thinkers such as Arthur Schopenhauer,Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol.
Barnstone W & Meyer M (2009). The Gnostic Bible: Gnostic texts of mystical wisdom from the ancient and medieval worlds. Shambhala Publications: Boston & London. In the Baháʼí Faith, Buddha is regarded as one of the Manifestations of God.
Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (E.G.C.), or the Gnostic Catholic Church, is a Gnostic church organization. It is the ecclesiastical arm of the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), an international fraternal initiatory organization devoted to promulgating the Law of Thelema.
Later that year, Reuss incorporated the Gnostic Catholic Church into O.T.O. after the original founders renamed their own church to the Universal Gnostic Church. The name "Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica" was not applied to the church until Crowley wrote the Gnostic Mass in 1913, which Reuss proclaimed to be the church's official rite. This marked the first time an established church was to accept the Law of Thelema as its central doctrine. Reuss then announced a new title for himself: the "Sovereign Patriarch and Primate of the Gnostic Catholic Church".
Gnostic systems postulate a dualism between God and the world,Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, p. 42, Beacon Press, 1963, ; 1st ed. 1958 varying from the "radical dualist" systems of Manichaeism to the "mitigated dualism" of classic gnostic movements. Radical dualism, or absolute dualism, posits two co-equal divine forces, while in mitigated dualism one of the two principles is in some way inferior to the other.
Marcion is sometimes described as a Gnostic philosopher. In some essential respects, Marcion proposed ideas which aligned well with Gnostic thought. Like the Gnostics, he believed that Jesus was essentially a divine spirit who appeared to human beings in human form, but did not actually take on a fleshly human body. However, Marcionism conceptualizes God in a way which cannot be reconciled with broader Gnostic thought.
The Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica descended from a line of French Gnostic revival churches that developed in the 19th century. At that time, these Gnostic churches were essentially Christian in nature. In 1907, Gerard Encausse, Jean Bricaud and Louis-Sophrone Fugairon founded their own, simply called the Gnostic Catholic Church. In 1908, they gave O.T.O. Grand Master Theodor Reuss episcopal consecration and primatial authority in their GCC.
For example, he invoked the beliefs of the Gnostic Christians when counseling Hawkgirl.
Mani went on to form his own Gnostic sect known as the Manicheans.
The recently discovered Gospel of Judas dates close to the period when Irenaeus lived (late 2nd century), and scholars typically regard this work as one of many Gnostic texts, showing one of many varieties of Gnostic beliefs of the period.
Layton, Bentley, The Gnostic Scriptures, 1987, p.361.Ehrman, Bart, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, 2003, p.59 More recently critics have questioned whether the description of Thomas as a "gnostic" gospel is based upon little other than the fact that it was found along with gnostic texts at Nag Hammadi.Davies, Stevan L., The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom, 1983, pp. 23–24.
He is known for his work regarding Gnosticism in early Christianity. His best-known published work is Gnostic Truth, Christian Heresy, in which he works to redact the Gnostic movement in early Christianity. Logan ties the Gnostic movement to the worship of Seth and contends that the main thrust of the different factions was a rebellion against the religion or religions of the Empires in the Ancient World.
It is a theological text, Gnostic in character, concerning the 'upper' and 'lower' soul.
221-2 After Reuss came into contact with French Gnostic Church leaders at a Masonic and Spiritualist conference in 1908, he founded Die Gnostische Katholische Kirche (the Gnostic Catholic Church), under the auspices of the OTO. Reuss subsequently dedicated the OTO to the promulgation of Crowley's philosophy of Thelema. It is for this church body, called in Latin the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (EGC), that Aleister Crowley wrote the Ecclesiæ Gnosticæ Catholicæ Canon Missæ ("Canon of the Mass of the Gnostic Catholic Church"),The Equinox III:1 (1929) p. 247 the central ritual of the OTO that is now commonly called the Gnostic Mass.
The Nature of the Archons: A Study in the Soteriology of a Gnostic Treatise from Nag Hammadi (CGII, 4). Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. . p. 44Fischer-Mueller, E. Aydeet. 1990. "Yaldabaoth: The Gnostic Female Principle in Its Fallenness." Novum Testamentum 32(1):79–95. .
It has also appendixes, traditions, resources and explanations. (This book has been translated by Mohsen Bidarfar that has been published by the name of “mysticism”(Gnosticism) and "Gnostic pretenders" (who pretend to be Gnostic) in 1961 A.D. (1340) and 1992 A.D. (1371).
The Seleucians were an ancient Gnostic sect who are said to have flourished in Galatia.
The Gnostic tradition was a prolific source of apocryphal gospels. While these writings borrowed the characteristic poetic features of apocalyptic literature from Judaism, Gnostic sects largely insisted on allegorical interpretations based on a secret apostolic tradition. With them, these apocryphal books were highly esteemed. A well-known Gnostic apocryphal book is the Gospel of Thomas, the only complete text of which was found in the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945.
The concept of an Ogdoad appears in Gnostic systems of the early Christian era, and was further developed by the theologian Valentinus (ca. 160 AD). The number eight plays an important part in Gnostic systems, and it is necessary to distinguish the different forms in which it appeared at different stages in the development of Gnosticism. The earliest Gnostic systems included a theory of seven heavens and a supercelestial region called the Ogdoad.
"Humanity will be transformed into a race of gnostic beings" (p.212).Sri Aurobindo, On Yoga. I The Synthesis of Yoga (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram 1957, originally in Arya 1914-1921). "The gnostic (vijnanamaya) being is in its character a truth- consciousnress" (pp. 557-558).
Examples of the narrative can be found within the Gnostic manuscripts On the Origin of the World and the Secret Book of John. Manichaeism, which has been considered a Gnostic sect, echoes these notions as well, presenting the primordial aspect of Jesus as the instructor.
The Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, or Gnostic Catholic Church (the ecclesiastical arm of Ordo Templi Orientis), offers its Rite of Baptism to any person at least 11 years old. The ceremony is performed before a Gnostic Mass and represents a symbolic birth into the Thelemic community.
Remaining currents of Hellenistic Judaism may have merged into Gnostic movements in the early centuries CE.
The novel claims Constantine wanted Christianity to unify the Roman Empire but thought it would appeal to pagans only if it featured a demigod similar to pagan heroes, so he destroyed the Gnostic Gospels that said Jesus was a human prophet and promoted the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which portray Jesus as divine. Historically, however, Gnostic Christianity did not portray Jesus as merely human. In fact, the Gnostic Jesus was less human than the Jesus of orthodox Christianity. While orthodox Christianity generally considered Christ both divine and human, many Gnostic sects considered Christ purely divine, his human body being a mere illusion (see Docetism).
The Gnostic Gospels are gnostic collections of writings about the teachings of Jesus, written from the 2nd – 4th century. These gospels are not part of the standard Biblical canon of any major Christian denomination, and as such are part of what is called the New Testament apocrypha.
Similar to many secret societies, O.T.O. membership is based on an initiatory system with a series of degree ceremonies that use ritual drama. The O.T.O. includes the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (EGC) or Gnostic Catholic Church. Its central rite, which is public, is Liber XV, The Gnostic Mass.
The story is consonant with other Gnostic writings and depiction of Gnostic thought in the writings of Origen, as well as with the Gospel of James; but there is no other testimony to this particular tale. Scholars have suggested a 2nd-century date to the text.
Willis Barnstone, Marvin Meyer The Gnostic Bible: Revised and Expanded Edition Shambhala Publications 2009 p. 803 Like the demiurge, he is endowed with the ability to create his own world and seeks to imprison humans in the material world, but here, his power is limited and depends on the higher God.Willis Barnstone, Marvin Meyer The Gnostic Bible: Revised and Expanded Edition Shambhala Publications 2009 p. 707 Such Gnostic anthropogenic can be found frequently among Isma'ili traditions.
However, since the goal is not to abandon the created world, but just to free oneself from ones own lower desires, it can be disputed whether this can still be Gnostic, but rather a completion of the message of Muhammad. It seems that Gnostic ideas were an influential part of early Islamic development but later lost its influence. However the Gnostic light metaphorics and the idea of unity of existence still prevailed in later Islamic thought.
For a somewhat later Gnostic work assigning a prominent role to Jesus' female disciples, see Pistis Sophia.
The Three Steles of Seth is a 3rd-century Sethian Gnostic text from the New Testament apocrypha.
Carpocrates of Alexandria was the founder of an early Gnostic sect from the first half of the 2nd century. As with many Gnostic sects, we know of the Carpocratians only through the writings of the Church Fathers, principally Irenaeus of Lyons and Clement of Alexandria. As these writers strongly opposed Gnostic doctrine, there is a question of negative bias when using this source. While the various references to the Carpocratians differ in some details, they agree as to the libertinism of the sect.
In Gnostic tradition, the term Sophia (Σοφία, Greek for "wisdom") refers to the final and lowest emanation of God. In most, if not all, versions of the gnostic myth, Sophia births the demiurge, who in turn brings about the creation of materiality. The positive or negative depiction of materiality thus resides a great deal on mythic depictions of Sophia's actions. She is occasionally referred to by the Hebrew equivalent of Achamoth (this is a feature of Ptolemy's version of the Valentinian gnostic myth).
The volume included new translations from the Nag Hammadi Library, together with extracts from the heresiological writers, and other gnostic material. It remains, along with The Nag Hammadi Library in English, one of the more accessible volumes of translations of the Nag Hammadi find. It includes extensive historical introductions to individual gnostic groups, notes on translation, annotations to the text, and the organization of tracts into clearly defined movements. Not all scholars agree that the entire library should be considered Gnostic.
In the modern era, many Gnostic texts have been uncovered, especially from the Nag Hammadi library. Some texts take the form of an expounding of the esoteric cosmology and ethics held by the Gnostics. Often this was in the form of dialogue in which Jesus expounds esoteric knowledge while his disciples raise questions concerning it. There is also a text, known as the Epistula Apostolorum, which is a polemic against Gnostic esoterica, but written in a similar style as the Gnostic texts.
A lion-faced deity found on a Gnostic gem in Bernard de Montfaucon's L'antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures may be a depiction of the Demiurge. Gnostic and Gnostic-influenced religions postulate the idea that the material world is inherently evil. The One true God is remote, beyond the material universe, therefore this universe must be governed by an inferior imposter deity. This deity was identified with the deity of the Old Testament by some sects, such as the Sethians and the Marcions.
Plotinus specifically points to the Gnostic doctrine of Sophia and her emission of the Demiurge. Though the former understanding certainly enjoys the greatest popularity, the identification of Plotinus' opponents as Gnostic is not without some contention. Christos Evangeliou has contendedEvangeliou, "Plotinus's Anti-Gnostic Polemic and Porphyry's Against the Christians", in Wallis & Bregman, p. 111. that Plotinus' opponents might be better described as simply "Christian Gnostics", arguing that several of Plotinus' criticisms are as applicable to orthodox Christian doctrine as well.
Irenaeus' treatise Against Heresies, which describes early Gnostic beliefs about Jesus' death which predated and influenced Islam. The belief that Jesus only appeared to be crucified and did not actually die predates Islam and is found in several Apocryphal and Gnostic Gospels. Although most contemporary scholars argue that the Islamic portrayal of Jesus himself is not docetic, his crucifixion narrative in the Quran could be. Irenaeus in his treatise Against Heresies describes early Gnostic beliefs regarding the crucifixion and death of Jesus that bear remarkable resemblance with the Islamic views, expounding on the hypothesis of substitution: One of the Christian Gnostic writings found in the Nag Hammadi library, the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, has a similar view of Jesus' death: The Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter, likewise, holds the same view of Jesus' death: The Gospel of Peter is a docetic Apocryphal Gospel.
The eucharistic host of the Gnostic Mass—called the Cake of Light—includes this oil as an important ingredient.
Eleven prayers addressed to the Sun, Moon, Lord, Lady, Gnostic Saints, Earth, Principles, Birth, Marriage, Death, and The End.
Gnostic Christianity developed a duotheistic doctrine based on illusion and enlightenment rather than forgiveness of sin. With only a few scriptures overlapping with the developing orthodox canon, most Gnostic texts and Gnostic gospels were eventually considered heretical and suppressed by mainstream Christians. A gradual splitting off of Gentile Christianity left Jewish Christians continuing to follow the Law of Moses, including practices such as circumcision. By the fifth century, they and the Jewish–Christian gospels would be largely suppressed by the dominant sects in both Judaism and Christianity.
Shekhinah, often in plural, is also present in some gnostic writings written in Aramaic, such as the writings of the Manichaeans and the Mandaeans, as well as others. In these writings, shekinas are described as hidden aspects of God, somewhat resembling the Amahrāspandan of the Zoroastrians.Jonas, Hans, The Gnostic Religion, 1958, p. 98.
But Gnosticism did not portray Jesus as merely human.. All Gnostic writings depict Christ as purely divine, his human body being a mere illusion (see Docetism). Gnostic sects saw Christ this way because they regarded matter as evil, and therefore believed that a divine spirit would never have taken on a material body.
Glorian Publishing (formerly known as Thelema Press) is a non-profit organization translating and publishing the Gnostic books of Samael Aun Weor. Since 2001, Glorian has published books, established a series of websites, and operates Gnostic Radio, a free internet radio service. Glorian is operated entirely by volunteers and funded entirely by donations.
The first four books of Against Heresies constitute a minute analysis and refutation of the Gnostic doctrines. The fifth is a statement of positive belief contrasting the constantly shifting and contradictory Gnostic opinions with the steadfast faith of the church. He appeals to the Biblical prophecies to demonstrate the truthfulness of Christianity.
"Music—Drastic or Gnostic?". In: Critical Inquiry Vol. 30, No. 3 (Spring 2004), pp. 505–536. Philip AuslanderAuslander, Phillip (2006).
The Thunder, Perfect Mind is an exhortatory poem discovered among the Gnostic manuscripts in the Nag Hammadi library in 1945.
The Gospel of Cerinthus is a lost gospel used by Cerinthus and by Carpocrates. According to Epiphanius,Pan. Haer. 28.5.1., I 317.10 this is a Jewish Gospel or Gnostic Gospel identical to the Gospel of the Ebionites and, apparently, is a truncated version of Matthew's Gospel. Bardy calls it a "Judaizing" rather than Gnostic gospel.
For him it is "the synthesis of all religions, schools and sects." Moving through Latin America, he finally settled in Mexico where he founded the Movimiento Gnostico Cristiano Universal (MGCU) (Universal Gnostic Christian Movement), then subsequently founded the Iglesia Gnostica Cristiana Universal (Universal Gnostic Christian Church) and the Associacion Gnostica de Estudios Antropologicos Culturales y Cientificos (AGEAC) (Gnostic Association of Scientific, Cultural and Anthropological Studies) to spread his teachings.Dawson (2007) p. 54-60 The MGCU became defunct by the time of Samael Aun Weor's death in December 1977.
48 We do not know whether or not the Ophites actually identified the serpent of the Garden of Eden with the Leviathan. However, since the Leviathan is basically connoted negatively in this Gnostic cosmology, if they identified him with the serpent of the Book of Genesis, he was probably indeed considered evil and just its advice was good.Tuomas Rasimus Paradise Reconsidered in Gnostic Mythmaking: Rethinking Sethianism in Light of the Ophite Evidence BRILL 2009 p. 69 Further, according to this Gnostic sect, after death, a soul must pass through the seven spheres of the Archons.
Nonetheless, early Gnostic teachers such as Valentinus saw their beliefs as aligned with Christianity. In the Gnostic Christian tradition, Christ is seen as a divine being which has taken human form in order to lead humanity back to the Light. However, Gnosticism is not a single standardized system, and the emphasis on direct experience allows for a wide variety of teachings, including distinct currents such as Valentianism and Sethianism. In the Persian Empire, Gnostic ideas spread as far as China via the related movement Manichaeism, while Mandaeism is still alive in Iraq.
Caruana, Laurence, The Hidden Passion: A Novel of the Gnostic Christ, Based on the Nag Hammadi Texts (Recluse 2007, ) Back cover.
The Neo-Luciferian Church (NLC) is a Gnostic and Luciferian organisation with roots in Western esotericism, Voodoo, Luciferianism, Thelema, and magic.
Centered in Los Angeles, the Ecclesia Gnostica has parishes and educational programs of the Gnostic Society spanning the Western US and also in the Kingdom of Norway. The lectionary and liturgical calendar of the Ecclesia Gnostica have been widely adopted by subsequent Gnostic churches, as have the liturgical services in use by the church, though in somewhat modified forms.
The Monad in early Christian gnosticism is an adaptation of concepts of the Monad in Greek philosophy to Christian gnostic belief systems.
Carl Jung and his associate G. R. S. Mead worked on trying to understand and explain the gnostic faith from a psychological standpoint. Jung's analytical psychology in many ways schematically mirrors ancient gnostic mythology, particularly those of Valentinus and the 'classic' gnostic doctrine described in most detail in the Apocryphon of John (see gnostic schools). Jung understands the emergence of the Demiurge out of the original, unified monadic source of the spiritual universe by gradual stages to be analogous to (and a symbolic depiction of) the emergence of the ego from the unconscious. However, it is uncertain as to whether the similarities between Jung's psychological teachings and those of the Gnostics are due to their sharing a "perennial philosophy", or whether Jung was unwittingly influenced by the Gnostics in the formation of his theories.
After his death, Smith's branch of the sect performed a Gnostic Mass in his honor at St. Mark's Church in the East Village.
Gnosticism in modern times includes a variety of contemporary religious movements, stemming from Gnostic ideas and systems from ancient Roman society. Gnosticism is an ancient name for a variety of religious ideas and systems, originating in Jewish-Christian milieux in the first and second century CE. The Mandaeans are an ancient Gnostic sect still active in Iran and Iraq with small communities in other parts of the world. The late 19th century saw the publication of popular sympathetic studies making use of recently rediscovered source materials. In this period there was also the revival of a Gnostic religious movement in France.
Gnostics considered the principal element of salvation to be direct knowledge of the supreme divinity in the form of mystical or esoteric insight. Many Gnostic texts deal not in concepts of sin and repentance, but with illusion and enlightenment. Gnostic writings flourished among certain Christian groups in the Mediterranean world until about the second century, when the Fathers of the early Church denounced them as heresy.The Social World of the First Christians (1995) , essay "Prolegomena to the Study of Ancient Gnosticism" by Bentley Layton Efforts to destroy these texts proved largely successful, resulting in the survival of very little writing by Gnostic theologians.
Valentinus drew freely on some books of the New Testament. Unlike a great number of other gnostic systems, which are expressly dualist, Valentinus developed a system that was more monistic, albeit expressed in dualistic terms.'Valentinian gnosticism ... differs essentially from dualism' (Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, 1978); 'a standard element in the interpretation of Valentinianism and similar forms of Gnosticism is the recognition that they are fundamentally monistic' (William Schoedel, 'Gnostic Monism and the Gospel of Truth' in The Rediscovery of Gnosticism, Vol.1: The School of Valentinus, edited by Bentley Layton, E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1980).
He hypothesized a Gnostic origin (specifically Mandaeanism which maintains that Jesus was a mšiha kdaba or "false prophet,") for the work. He noted similarities with the Pauline corpus, but attributed this to a common Hellenistic background. He claimed that the many contrasts in the Gospel, between light and darkness, truth and lies, above and below, and so on, show a tendency toward dualism, explained by the Gnostic roots of the work. Despite the Gnostic origin, Bultmann commended the author for several improvements over Gnosticism, such as the Judeo-Christian view of creation and the demythologizing of the role of the Redeemer.
The Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter is a text found amongst the Nag Hammadi library, and part of the New Testament apocrypha. Like the vast majority of texts in the Nag Hammadi collection, it is heavily Gnostic. It was probably written around 100-200 AD. Since the only known copy is written in Coptic, it is also known as the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter. The text takes Gnostic interpretations of the crucifixion to the extreme, picturing Jesus as laughing and warning against people who cleave to the name of a dead man, thinking they shall become pure.
Hellmouth in the fresco Last Judgment, by Giacomo Rossignolo, c. 1555 The Church Father Origen accused a Gnostic sect of venerating the biblical serpent of the Garden of Eden. Therefore, he calls them Ophites, naming after the serpent they are supposed to worship.Tuomas Rasimus Paradise Reconsidered in Gnostic Mythmaking: Rethinking Sethianism in Light of the Ophite Evidence BRILL 2009 p.
Pleroma is also used in the general Greek language, and is used by the Greek Orthodox church in this general form, since the word appears in the Epistle to the Colossians. Proponents of the view that Paul was actually a gnostic, such as Elaine Pagels, view the reference in Colossians as a term that has to be interpreted in a gnostic sense.
The line-up was Shaefer, Burkey, Choy and Flynn. Shaefer only provided vocals due to long battles with tendinitis and carpal tunnel syndrome. The Gnostic guitarist Sonny Carson played all of Shaefer's guitar parts, while Burkey was later replaced by Chris Baker of Gnostic. On July 12, 2008, Shaefer issued a statement indicating that he and Flynn were working on new material.
Until the discovery of Gnostic works among the hidden cache at Nag Hammadi, few authentic Gnostic works survived. One has been the "Letter to Flora" from a Valentinian teacher, Ptolemy-- who is also known from the writings of Irenaeus-- to a woman named Flora. The letter itself is only known by its full inclusion in Epiphanius' Panarion, an unsympathetic context.
Valentinianism is the name for the school of gnostic philosophy tracing back to Valentinus. It was one of the major gnostic movements, having widespread following throughout the Roman Empire and provoking voluminous writings by Christian heresiologists. Notable Valentinians included Heracleon, Ptolemy, Florinus, Marcus and Axionicus. Valentinus professed to have derived his ideas from Theodas or Theudas, a disciple of Paul.
According to some Gnostic traditions, Simon of Cyrene, by mistaken identity, suffered the events leading up to the crucifixion, and died on the cross instead of Jesus. This is the story presented in the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, although it is unclear whether Simon or another actually died on the cross.Willis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer, eds. The Gnostic Bible.
Abraxas (, variant form Abrasax, ΑΒΡΑΣΑΞ) is a word of mystic meaning in the system of the Gnostic Basilides, being there applied to the "Great Archon" (Gk., megas archōn), the princeps of the 365 spheres (Gk., ouranoi). The word is found in Gnostic texts such as the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, and also appears in the Greek Magical Papyri.
At the Man of Earth level, there are three levels of Local Body, which are Camps, Oases, and Lodges. #Camps tend to be the smallest and are not required to perform initiations. They are encouraged to celebrate the Gnostic Mass. #Oases must be capable of initiating through the III° and are required to perform the Gnostic Mass six times yearly.
In the second (and possibly late first) century, Gnosticism was a competing religious tradition to Christianity which shared some elements of theology. Elaine Pagels concentrated on how the Gnostics interpreted Paul's letters and how evidence from gnostic sources may challenge the assumption that Paul wrote his letters to combat "gnostic opponents" and to repudiate their statement that they possess secret wisdom.
The Gnostic Saints of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica are a series of historical and mythological figures revered in the religion of Thelema. They are found in the fifth Collect of Liber XV, titled "The Saints". Two Gnostic Saints have been officially added to the original list. William Blake was so recognized based on a discovered writing by Aleister Crowley which described him as such.
The author name is stated as Brother Harmonius, who claims to be a Gnostic monk. No other information, besides incidental autobiographical information is known.
He has taken the role of Priest in Liber XV, The Gnostic Mass in the Illawarra and presented numerous workshops based on Crowley's magick.
After 2000, Kasser organized the restoration and prepared the edition princeps of Codex Tchacos, containing the Gospel of Judas and three other Coptic gnostic texts.
Symbol of the Neo-Luciferian Church The Neo-Luciferian Church is a Gnostic and Luciferian organisation with roots in Western esotericism, Luciferianism, Thelema, and magic.
Varying fragments survived in Greek and Latin within monastic libraries. It contains strong docetic themes, but is not considered in modern scholarship to be gnostic.
The Testament of Solomon is an album composed by John Zorn and performed by the Gnostic Trio (Bill Frisell, Carol Emanuel and Kenny Wollesen). It was recorded in New York City in March 2014 and released on the Tzadik label.Tzadik Catalog, accessed April 1, 2016 The album is the fourth by the trio following 2012's The Gnostic Preludes and 2013's The Mysteries and In Lambeth.
Father Michael uses Shay's quotations from the Gnostic Gospels as his religious foundation. Ian Fletcher testifies as an expert on the Gnostic Gospels. Father Michael, privately, admits to Shay that he was on the jury that convicted him to death. Father Michael is able to locate Shay's sister, Grace, and tries to convince her to forgive Shay for setting the fire that ultimately disfigured her face.
The principal ritual of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica is the Gnostic Mass, a Eucharistic ceremony written by Aleister Crowley in 1913. Theodor Reuss produced and authorized a German translation in 1918. The text of the Gnostic Mass makes reference to ceremonies of baptism, confirmation, and marriage. Crowley left some notes towards a baptism ritual, and his "Liber CVI" was written for use in a last rites circumstance.
These schools tend to view evil in terms of matter that is markedly inferior to goodness and lacking spiritual insight and goodness rather than as an equal force. Many of these movements used texts related to Christianity, with some identifying themselves as specifically Christian, though quite different from the Orthodox or Roman Catholic forms. Jesus and several of his apostles, such as Thomas the Apostle, claimed as the founder of the Thomasine form of Gnosticism, figure in many Gnostic texts. Mary Magdalene is respected as a Gnostic leader, and is considered superior to the twelve apostles by some gnostic texts, such as the Gospel of Mary.
René Guénon founded the gnostic review, La Gnose in 1909, before moving to a more Perennialist position, and founding his Traditionalist School. Gnostic Thelemite organizations, such as Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica and Ordo Templi Orientis, trace themselves to Crowley's thought. The discovery and translation of the Nag Hammadi library after 1945 has had a huge effect on Gnosticism since World War II. Intellectuals who were heavily influenced by Gnosticism in this period include Lawrence Durrell, Hans Jonas, Philip K. Dick and Harold Bloom, with Albert Camus and Allen Ginsberg being more moderately influenced. Celia Green has written on Gnostic Christianity in relation to her own philosophy.
Mary Magdalene is a central figure in later Gnostic Christian writings, including the Dialogue of the Savior, the Pistis Sophia, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Mary which many scholars attribute to Mary Magdalene. These texts portray Mary Magdalene as an apostle, as Jesus's closest and most beloved disciple and the only one who truly understood his teachings. In the Gnostic texts, or Gnostic gospels, Mary Magdalene's closeness to Jesus results in tension with another disciple, Peter, due to her gender and Peter's jealousy of special teachings given to her. Scholars find claims Mary Magdalene was romantically involved with Jesus to be unsupported by evidence.
Mandaeans, sometimes also called Sabians, are a people found mainly in southern Iraq. Their numbers total no more than 70,000. They follow Mandaeism, a gnostic religion.
Jonas, The Gnostic..., op. cit., pp. 228, 231.I. Gardner and S.N.C. Lieu, Manichaean Texts from the Roman Empire, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp.
This is the same Hermogenes mentioned above. Tertullian writes that he was a sect leader, who mixed Stoic, Gnostic and Christian views to create a new religion.
Green, Celia (1981, 2006). Advice to Clever Children. Oxford: Oxford Forum. xxxv–xxxvii. Alfred North Whitehead was aware of the existence of the newly discovered Gnostic scrolls.
The Nag Hammadi library (also known as the "Chenoboskion Manuscripts" and the "Gnostic Gospels") is a collection of early Christian and Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. Thirteen leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by a local farmer named Muhammed al-Samman.Marvin Meyer and James M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition. HarperOne, 2007. pp. 2–3.
20th-century psychoanalyst Carl Jung wrote his Seven Sermons to the Dead and attributed them to Basilides. The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges was interested in Irenaeus' account of Basilides' Gnostic doctrine and wrote an essay on the subject: "A Vindication of the False Basilides" (1932). Borges J.L., Discusión, (1932), p.48 Basilides' Gnostic Gospel is one of the books mentioned in Borges's short story "The Library of Babel" (1941).
Theudas was allegedly the name of a Christian Gnostic thinker, who was a follower of Paul the Apostle. He went on to teach the Gnostic Valentinus. The only evidence of this connection is the testimony of Valentinius' followers and Clement of Alexandria. It has been proposed that he was the Theudas mentioned in the Bible, but it is unlikely, as the latter would have been dead before Valentinus's birth.
But now, you derive from a foreign thing: and it presides over a foreign thing. You derive from a foreign thing: for you are [dissimilar].”'' The “foreign thing” here refers to the Invisible Parent, that is, the highest being in the gnostic mythology that the Barbelo was created from. A Sethian of the gnostic race would consider themselves a foreigner, born of foreigners (those within Seth’s immovable race).
While Gnostic magic is largely forgotten (being the dominant art of the Ancient North, destroyed during the First Apocalypse), Anagogic magic is more widely studied among multiple schools.
In 1964, Bertiaux traveled to Haiti, where he was initiated into the system of Haitian Vodoun. He settled in Chicago in 1966, where he formed (among other bodies) the Neo-Pythagorean Gnostic Church. Bertiaux's interpretation of Vodoun was strongly influenced by Martinism, a Francophone occultist society who pretended to inherit from the teachings of Louis-Claude De Saint Martin, although the regularity and mere existence of such a linkage was questioned, and which became established in Haiti in the 18th century. Bertiaux had long been associated with the Ordo Templi Orientis Antiqua, a initiatic gnostic-magical order supposedly founded in 1921 in Haiti by the gnostic patriarch and Voudon high priest Lucien- Francois Jean-Maine.
Valentinians understood the conflict between Jews and Gentiles in Romans to be a coded reference to the differences between Psychics (people who are partly spiritual but have not yet achieved separation from carnality) and Pneumatics (totally spiritual people). The Valentinians argued that such codes were intrinsic in gnosticism, secrecy being important to ensuring proper progression to true inner understanding. According to Bentley Layton "Classical Gnosticism" and "The School of Thomas" antedated and influenced the development of Valentinus, whom Layton called "the great [Gnostic] reformer" and "the focal point" of Gnostic development. While in Alexandria, where he was born, Valentinus probably would have had contact with the Gnostic teacher Basilides, and may have been influenced by him.
Max Gorman Stairway to the Stars: Sufism, Gurdjieff and the Inner Tradition of Mankind Karnac Books 2010 p. 51 Like the gnostic conception of human beings imprisoned in matter, Sufi traditions acknowledge that the human soul is an accomplice of the material world and subject to bodily desires similar to the way archontic spheres envelop the pneuma.Tobias Churton Gnostic Philosophy: From Ancient Persia to Modern Times Simon and Schuster 2005 The Ruh must therefore gain victory over the lower and material-bound psyche, to overcome its animal nature. A human being captured by its animal desires, mistakenly claims autonomy and independence from the "higher God", thus resembling the lower deity in classical gnostic traditions.
The philosophers engaged in these discussions varied in their approaches and solutions to the problems they identified. Jacob Taubes and Gershom Scholem viewed the ancient Gnostic worldview as a precedent for modern nihilism, and embraced it; especially Taubes, who initiated discussions about modernity and Gnosticism with his book Occidental Eschatology (1947), identified as a modern Gnostic, considered the world to be illegitimate, and wished to see it end in an apocalyptic destruction. Schmitt, Eric Voegelin, Hans Jonas, Hans Blumenberg and Odo Marquard, on the other hand, wanted to legitimise the world as it is and overcome the Gnostic rejection of the world. Marquard (1928–2015) was a professor of philosophy at the University of Giessen.
In the first two centuries of the Christian era, a number of writings were circulated. It is unclear now why Thomas was seen as an authority for doctrine, although this belief is documented in Gnostic groups as early as the Pistis Sophia. In that Gnostic work, Mary Magdalene (one of the disciples) says: An early, non-Gnostic tradition may lie behind this statement, which also emphasizes the primacy of the Gospel of Matthew in its Aramaic form, over the other canonical three. Besides the Acts of Thomas there was a widely circulated Infancy Gospel of Thomas probably written in the later 2nd century, and probably also in Syria, which relates the miraculous events and prodigies of Jesus' boyhood.
Deutsch, Nathaniel. (2003) Mandaean Literature. In The Gnostic Bible (pp. 527–561). New Seeds Books Mandaeans revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enos, Noah, Shem, Aram, and especially John the Baptist.
F. W. Haack Europas Neue Religion, p. 42, Herder Spektrum 1991 The Gnostic associations are active in Switzerland with a moderate following of Italian-, French- and German-speaking members.
Constantine wanted Christianity to act as a unifying religion for the Roman Empire. He thought Christianity would appeal to pagans only if it featured a demigod similar to pagan heroes. According to the Gnostic Gospels, Jesus was merely a human prophet, not a demigod. Therefore, to change Jesus' image, Constantine destroyed the Gnostic Gospels and promoted the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which portray Jesus as divine or semi-divine.
In the early centuries AD, the ouroboros was adopted as a symbol by Gnostic Christians and chapter 136 of the Pistis Sophia, an early Gnostic text, describes "a great dragon whose tail is in its mouth". In medieval alchemy, the ouroboros became a typical western dragon with wings, legs, and a tail. A famous image of the dragon gnawing on its tail from the eleventh-century Codex Marcianus was copied in numerous works on alchemy.
Gnostic Christianity discussed Adam and Eve in two known surviving texts, namely the "Apocalypse of Adam" found in the Nag Hammadi documents and the Testament of Adam. The creation of Adam as Protoanthropos, the original man, is the focal concept of these writings. Another Gnostic tradition held that Adam and Eve were created to help defeat Satan. The serpent, instead of being identified with Satan, is seen as a hero by the Ophites.
Bernard McGinn suggests that the image of the two Beasts in Revelation stems from a "mythological background" involving the figures of Leviathan and Behemoth.McGinn 54 The Pastoral Epistles contain denunciations of "myths" (muthoi). This may indicate that Rabbinic or Gnostic mythology was popular among the early Christians to whom the epistles were written and that the epistles' author was attempting to resist that mythology.Barrett 69-71 mentions both Rabbinic and gnostic mythology as a possibility.
The Gospel of Judas is a Gnostic gospel. The content consists of conversations between Jesus and Judas Iscariot. Given that it includes late 2nd century theology, it is thought to have been composed in the 2nd century by Gnostic Christians, rather than the historic Judas himself. The only copy of it known to exist is a Coptic language text that has been carbon dated to 280 AD, plus or minus 60 years.
Judas has been a figure of great interest to esoteric groups, such as many Gnostic sects. Irenaeus records the beliefs of one Gnostic sect, the Cainites, who believed that Judas was an instrument of the Sophia, Divine Wisdom, thus earning the hatred of the Demiurge. His betrayal of Jesus thus was a victory over the materialist world. The Cainites later split into two groups, disagreeing over the ultimate significance of Jesus in their cosmology.
This manuscript (identified as the "Berlin Gnostic Codex" or BG 8502) was used along with the three versions found at Nag Hammadi to produce the translations now available. The fact that four manuscript "editions" of this text survived—two "long" versions and two "short" versions—suggests how important this text was in early gnostic Christian circles. In the three Nag Hammadi codices the Apocryphon of John appears always in the first version.
Although probably both accounts originate from the same source, the Gnostic development differs from the Jewish development of Samael, in which Samael is merely an angel and servant of God.
Grant's view that the author of the Gospel of John was "part of a group of early Christian gnostic-mystics" has since been discredited. Grant died on July 11, 1974.
The term "Heimarmene" (personified or not) is also widely used in the Greek Stoic tradition, the Gnostic religion (such as in the Pistis Sophia manuscript), and other obscure religious sects.
Llewelyn, Stephen Robert, Alexandra Robinson, and Blake Edward Wassell. "Does John 8:44 Imply That the Devil Has a Father?: Contesting the Pro-Gnostic Reading." Novum Testamentum 60.1 (2018): 14–23.
F. Legge. (New York: MacMillan, 1921), pp. 106-113. He likewise condemns the "Phrygians", i.e., the followers of Montanus and the Gnostic heresy of the Encratites.Hippolytus of Rome, Philosophumena, vol. 2.
She later tried to perform astral projection to commune with him. The O.T.O. also held a memorial service—with attendees including Helen and Sara—at which Smith led the Gnostic Mass.
Tertullian calls Paul "the apostle of the heretics", because Paul's writings were attractive to gnostics, and interpreted in a gnostic way, while Jewish Christians found him to stray from the Jewish roots of Christianity. In I Corinthians Paul refers to some church members as "having knowledge" (, ton echonta gnosin). James Dunn claims that in some cases, Paul affirmed views that were closer to gnosticism than to proto-orthodox Christianity. According to Clement of Alexandria, the disciples of Valentinus said that Valentinus was a student of a certain Theudas, who was a student of Paul, and Elaine Pagels notes that Paul's epistles were interpreted by Valentinus in a gnostic way, and Paul could be considered a proto-gnostic as well as a proto-Catholic.
Van Manen claimed that they could not have been written in their final form earlier than the 2nd century. He also noted that the Marcionite school was the first to publish the epistles, and that Marcion ( – ) used them as justification for his gnostic and docetic views that Jesus' incarnation was not in a physical body. Van Manen also studied Marcion's version of Galatians in contrast to the canonical version, and argued that the canonical version was a later revision which de-emphasized the Gnostic aspects. Price also argues for a later dating of the epistles, and sees them as a compilation of fragments (possibly with a Gnostic core), contending that Marcion was responsible for much of the Pauline corpus or even wrote the letters himself.
Rethinking "Gnosticism": An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category, is a 1996 book by Michael Allen Williams. This is one of the first critical works that goes about comparing the established academic definitions of gnosticism to the texts discovered at Nag Hammadi. The main points of the book are that there is no established definition of "gnosticism" by people who use the term, let alone the academic world; and that the groups referred to as "gnostic" by the Christian Church apologists referred to themselves often by their leader or leaders' names but no group referred to themselves as "gnostic" or "gnostics". Also, Williams mentions the argument that none of the groups labeled "gnostic" shared a common set of beliefs that put them in a group together.
If the soul does not succeed, it will be swallowed by a dragon-shaped archon, who holds the world captive and returns the soul into an animal body – a depiction resembling the Leviathan mentioned before.Tuomas Rasimus Paradise Reconsidered in Gnostic Mythmaking: Rethinking Sethianism in Light of the Ophite Evidence BRILL 2009 p. 70 In Mandaeism, Leviathan is regarded as being coessential with a demon called Ur.Hans Jonas: The Gnostic Religion, 3. ed., Boston 2001, p. 117.
Hippolytus (170–235) wrote the ten-volume Refutation Against all Heresies, of which eight have been unearthed. It also focuses on the connection between pre-Socratic (and therefore Pre-Incantation of Christ) ideas and the false beliefs of early gnostic heretical leaders. Thirty-three of the groups he reported on are considered Gnostic by modern scholars, including 'the foreigners' and 'the Seth people'. Hippolytus further presents individual teachers such as Simon, Valentinus, Secundus, Ptolemy, Heracleon, Marcus and Colorbasus.
In the late 1980s scholars voiced concerns about the broadness of "Gnosticism" as a meaningful category. Bentley Layton proposed to categorize Gnosticism by delineating which groups were marked as gnostic in ancient texts. According to Layton, this term was mainly applied by heresiologists to the myth described in the Apocryphon of John, and was used mainly by the Sethians and the Ophites. According to Layton, texts which refer to this myth can be called "classical Gnostic".
Epiphanes is the author of On Righteousness,Ephiphanes (The Gnostic Society Library); Mead 1880:232-235. a notable early Gnostic Christian literary work that promotes communist principles, that was published and discussed by Clement of Alexandria, in Stromaties, III. Epiphanes was also attributed with founding Monadic Gnosis.Wace 1880:147 G.R.S. Mead however thinks that Epiphanes was a legend and may not have been an actual person, that the real author of On Righteousness may be the Valentinian, Marcus.
Gnostics structured their world of transcendent being by ontological distinctions. The plenitude of the divine world emerges from a sole high deity by emanation, radiation, unfolding and mental self-reflection. The technique of self-performable contemplative mystical ascent towards and beyond a realm of pure being, which is rooted in Plato's Symposium and was common in Gnostic thought, was also expressed by Plotinus. Divine triads, tetrads, and ogdoads in Gnostic thought often are closely related to Neo-Pythagorean arithmology.
The Nag Hammadi Library is a collection of thirteen codices that was found near the Egyptian city of Nag Hammadi in 1945. Many writings found in this library are referred to as “Gnostic Gospels” because most of the documents contain Gnostic teachings that conflicted with the beliefs of proto-orthodox Christianity, which at the time was becoming the predominant form of Christianity. Therefore, most were rejected from the canon as Orthodox Christianity was formed in the early centuries C.E.
The Uranian Phalanstery and the associated First New York Gnostic Lyceum Temple are artist collectives in New York City. The Uranian Phalanstery was established in 1974 in the Lower East Side of Manhattan by Richard Tyler and his wife, Dorothea Baer. For over thirty years, it has served as a stimulating, art-filled oasis for many gnostic artists. Due to the severe physical deterioration of the building, the Phalanstery was relocated to the Upper West Side in 2010.
The earliest extant work is the Gnostic Psalter of the 2nd century, a collection of Psalm texts in hymn form reflecting a Gnostic theology. The first orthodox work are the hymns of Ephrem the Syrian (306–373), some of which are still used today. Both hymns and antiphonal psalmody were brought by St. Ambrose to Milan and are apparently the basis for Ambrosian chant. Modern Syrian chant is much more rhythmic and syllabic than Gregorian chant.
Litwa, "The Wondrous Exchange," p. 316–317. In response to this Gnostic view of Christ, Irenaeus emphasized that the Word became flesh and developed a soteriology that emphasized the significance of Christ's material Body in saving humanity, as discussed in the sections above.Litwa, "The Wondrous Exchange," p. 313–316. In his criticism of Gnosticism, Irenaeus made reference to a Gnostic gospel which portrayed Judas in a positive light, as having acted in accordance with Jesus' instructions.
The esoteric Freemason Jules Doinel, while working as archivist for the library of Orléans in France, he discovered a medieval manuscript dated 1022, which had been written by Stephen, a canon of the Orléans Cathedral, burned at the stake in 1022 for his pre-Cathar Gnostic doctrines (see Orléans heresy). Doinel founded the Gnostic Church in 1890, a date which opened for him and his followers ‘the first year of the Restoration of Gnosis’. Doinel claimed that he had a vision in which the Aeon Jesus appeared, He charged Doinel with the work of establishing a new church. When Doinel attended a séance in the oratory of the Countess of Caithness, it appears that the disembodied spirits of ancient Albigensians, joined by a heavenly voice, laid spiritual hands on Doinel, creating him the bishop of the Gnostic Church. As patriarch of the new Church, Doinel took the mystical name ‘Valentinus II, Bishop of the Holy Assembly of the Paraclete and of the Gnostic Church’, and nominated eleven titular bishops, including a ‘sophia’ (female bishop), as well as deacons and deaconesses.
Featurette, disc 7. Released on December 11, 2007. Locke gives Ben Philip K. Dick's VALIS, a 1981 science fiction novel about a gnostic vision of one aspect of God.Dick, Philip K., (1981) VALIS.
39–40, n. 43. While Mandaeans agree with other gnostic sects that the world is a prison governed by the planetary archons, they do not view it as a cruel and inhospitable one.
The E.G.U. later changed its name to (E.G.A.; Apostolic Gnostic Church). Meanwhile, the original in Paris had been taken over by Léon Champrenaud (Théophane), it later disintegrated under Patrice Genty (Basilide) in 1926.
While this "Logos Christology" is recognizable for Greek metaphysics, it is nevertheless not derived from pagan sources, and Hengel rejects the idea of influence from "Hellenistic mystery cults or a Gnostic redeemer myth".
Nag Hammadi Codex XIII (designated by siglum NHC XIII) is a papyrus codex with a collection of early Christian Gnostic texts in Coptic (Sahidic dialect). The manuscript is dated to the 4th century.
Irenaeus describes the right response to Gnostic doctrine as "reviling" (καταφυσησαντας; literally exsufflantes).Adversus haereses 1.16.3, ed. A. Rousseau and Louis Doutreleau, Contre les Hérésies 1, Sources Chrétiennes 263 (Paris, 1978), 262-3.
He had known the essayist and critic since 1971, and wrote the "Foreword" to the 1974 English translation of his book... In Monsieur, "Durrell's Gnostics enact their refusal of the cursed world, flawed in every way, through suicide via the active acceptance of death." But Lacarrière had written that "suicide is the absolute antithesis of the Gnostic attitude."Jacques Lacarriere, The Gnostics, p. 38 The Gnostic suicide plot is an element that Durrell uses in his four late novels of the Avignon Quintet.
The Ecclesia Gnostica Mysteriorum (EGM), commonly known as "the Church of Gnosis" or "the Gnostic Sanctuary," was initially established in Palo Alto by bishop Rosamonde Miller as a parish of the Ecclesia Gnostica, but soon became an independent body with emphasis on the experience of gnosis and the balance of the divine masculine and feminine principles. The Gnostic Sanctuary is now located in Redwood City, California. The EGM also claims a distinct lineage of Mary Magdalene from a surviving tradition in France.
In many Gnostic systems, the aeons are the various emanations of the superior God or Monad. Beginning in certain Gnostic texts with the hermaphroditic aeon Barbelo, the first emanated being, various interactions with the Monad occur which result in the emanation of successive pairs of aeons, often in male–female pairings called syzygies. The numbers of these pairings varied from text to text, though some identify their number as being thirty. The aeons as a totality constitute the pleroma, the "region of light".
A number of later Christian texts, usually dating to the second century or later, exist as New Testament apocrypha, among which the gnostic gospels have been of major recent interest among scholars.Van Voorst, Robert E (2000). Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 215–217 The 1945 discovery of the Nag Hammadi library created a significant amount of scholarly interest and many modern scholars have since studied the gnostic gospels and written about them.
The Severians were a sect of gnostic Encratites. Epiphanius supposes their leader Severus to have preceded Tatian (founder of Encratites) but Eusebius, Theodoret, and Jerome make him Tatian's successor. These latter authorities are followed by most ecclesiastical historians, and the silence of Irenaeus and Hippolytus regarding Severus renders the later date most probable. Ephiphanius ascribes to the Severians a belief in the well known Gnostic power Ialdaboth (Yaldabaoth) who appears in the Ophite system as the first offspring of Bythus and Ennoia.
The three 'denials' are also present in a Gnostic source, the Apocalypse of Peter from the Nag Hammadi library, but the roles are reversed in the context of meditation and seeing inner vision of the Master. In the Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter, Jesus denies Peter "three times in this night" as not ready for inner sight, 72,5. Both details of "three times" denied and "in this night" being present suggests a relationship to the canonical portrayal of the Denial of Peter.
Some believe that Gnostic Christianity was a later development, some time around the middle or late 2nd century, around the time of Valentinus.No Longer Jews: The Search for Gnostic Origins, Carl B. Smith, Hendrickson Publishers (September 2004). Gnosticism was in turn made up of many smaller groups, some of which did not claim any connection to Jesus Christ. In Mandaeist Gnosticism, Mandaeans maintain that Jesus was a mšiha kdaba or "false messiah" who perverted the teachings entrusted to him by John the Baptist.
54Tuomas RasimusParadise Reconsidered in Gnostic Mythmaking: Rethinking Sethianism in Light of the Ophite Evidence Brill, 2009 p. 13 In Apocalypse of Peter, Peter talks with the savior whom the "priests and people" believed to have killed.John Douglas Turner, Anne Marie McGuire The Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty Years: Proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoration [in Philadelphia] Brill 1997 p. 55 Manichaeism, which was influenced by Gnostic ideas, adhered to the idea that not Jesus, but somebody else was crucified instead.
Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel state that contrary to the book's claims, the Gnostic Gospels (e.g. the Gospels of Thomas, Philip, Mary Magdalene, and the Judas) also do not focus more on Jesus' humanity. The other known Gospels, for the most part, treat Jesus as more otherworldly and lack the humanizing detail of the Biblical accounts. The assertion that "more than eighty gospels" were written, with only the familiar four chosen as canonical, greatly exaggerates the number of Gnostic Gospels written.
Pagels completed her Ph.D. in 1970, and joined the faculty at Barnard College. She headed its Department of Religion from 1974 until she moved to Princeton in 1982. In 1975, after studying the Pauline Epistles and comparing them to Gnosticism and the early Church, Pagels wrote the book, The Gnostic Paul which argues that Paul the Apostle was a source for Gnosticism and hypothesizes that Paul's influence on the direction of the early Christian church was great enough to inspire the creation of pseudonymous writings such as the Pastoral Epistles (First and Second Timothy and Titus), in order to make it appear that Paul was anti-Gnostic. Pagels' study of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts was the basis for The Gnostic Gospels (1979), a popular introduction to the Nag Hammadi library.
The emergence of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945 greatly increased the amount of source material available. Its translation into English and other modern languages in 1977 resulted in a wide dissemination, and as a result had observable influence on several modern figures, and upon modern Western culture in general. This article attempts to summarize those modern figures and movements that have been influenced by Gnosticism, both prior and subsequent to the Nag Hammadi discovery. A number of ecclesiastical bodies that identify as Gnostic have set up or re-founded since World War II as well, including the Ecclesia Gnostica, Johannite Church, Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the Thomasine Church (not to be confused with the St. Thomas Christians of India), the Alexandrian Gnostic Church, and the North American College of Gnostic Bishops.
Curiously, the text also quotes from Homer's Odyssey. These quotes indicate that the author viewed Greek legend and mythology as a type of scripture, just as the author also viewed large portions of the Old and New Testaments as scripture. The author and date are not certain, however is likely from between the 1st century AD and the 4th century AD. Although it is silent concerning the typical Gnostic cosmology, its placement in the same codex with such texts as the Apocryphon of John, Hypostasis of the Archons, and On the Origin of the World indicate that it may well have been produced by a school which accepted Gnostic cosmology. In this context, the female personification of the soul resembles the passion of Sophia, which is a theme pervasively found in Gnostic cosmology.
Adamantius was a 4th-century Christian writer sometimes mistaken for Origen. He may have come from Asia Minor or Syria but very little is known of him. He wrote anti-Gnostic works in Greek.
In Dark Alleys is a modern psychological horror game set in Los Angeles.Vandereyken, Dirk (December 15, 2006). "Review of In Dark Alleys" RPGnet. Like the roleplaying game Kult, it has a gnostic cosmological backdrop.
Classical Gnostics,For Sant Mat's affinities with Classic Gnosticism, see: Davidson, John, 1995, The Gospel of Jesus. Davidson, The Robe of Glory. Diem, Andrea Grace, The Gnostic Mystery. Tessler, Neil, Sophia’s Passion, on-line.
The Hypostasis of the Archons or The Reality of the Rulers is an exegesis on the Book of Genesis 1–6 and expresses Gnostic mythology of the divine creators of the cosmos and humanity.
5 Exceptions to this positive witness include Tatian,Moffatt, James. An Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament. 1911: p. 420. a disciple of Justin Martyr turned heretic, as well as the Gnostic Basilides.
In the neo-Gnostic teachings of Samael Aun Weor, an individual has 108 chances (lifetimes) to eliminate his egos and transcend the material world before "devolving" and having the egos forcefully removed in the infradimensions.
These linguistic and religious traditions still persist to the present day. The Gnostic Mandeans also retained their ancient culture, religion and Mandaic-Aramaic language after the Arab Islamic conquest, and these too still survive today.
Gnostic literature of the first few centuries AD calls Noah's wife Norea, including texts ascribed to her, as reported by Epiphanius, and confirmed in modern times with the discovery of these texts at Nag Hammadi.
Contemporary scholarship largely agrees that Gnosticism has Jewish Christian origins, originating in the late first century AD in nonrabbinical Jewish sects and early Christian sects. Many heads of gnostic schools were identified as Jewish Christians by Church Fathers, and Hebrew words and names of God were applied in some gnostic systems.Jewish Encyclopedia, Gnosticism The cosmogonic speculations among Christian Gnostics had partial origins in Maaseh Bereshit and Maaseh Merkabah. This thesis is most notably put forward by Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) and Gilles Quispel (1916–2006).
Prior to the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945 Gnosticism was known primarily through the works of heresiologists, Church Fathers who opposed those movements. These writings had an antagonistic bias towards gnostic teachings, and were incomplete. Several heresiological writers, such as Hippolytus, made little effort to exactly record the nature of the sects they reported on, or transcribe their sacred texts. Reconstructions of incomplete Gnostic texts were attempted in modern times, but research on Gnosticism was coloured by the orthodox views of those heresiologists.
He claimed to be in contact with a group of unidentified American gnostic philosophers who were trying to create a new religion identified as the Gnosis of Princeton, where most of these imaginary scientists were active. Thereafter Raymond Ruyer presented his own gnostic ideas. The book was a success as many of its readers were not aware of the hoax for a long time. However, his next publications did not raise interest in France, and were better known in Canada and the United States.
Through his interest in the Gnostic Christianity of the Cathars and his belief in its connection with an ancient tradition, in his later years Gadal made contact with the leaders of the neo-Gnostic, Christian Rosicrucian movement, the Lectorium Rosicrucianum - Jan van Rijckenborgh and Catharose de Petri. Gadal's theories and ideas subsequently became a very important element in the cosmology of the Lectorium and to this day members of the society embark on pilgrimages to the Ariège and the Lombrives caves every five years.
In a novel such as The Hidden Passion (Recluse 2007 ), the author has retold the tale of Christ from the Gnostic perspective. Though condemned by the early church as a heresy, Gnosticism expands Christian myth by incorporating motifs from other cultures, such as ancient Greece (Platonism) and Egypt (Hermeticism). Throughout the novel, Christ utters the actual sayings (logia) of the Gnostic gospels found at Nag Hammadi Egypt. L. Caruana's interest in Gnosticism forms part of a much broader fascination with crossing myths from different cultural mythologies.
The exception was the Jehovah's Witnesses, whom Bloom regards as non-Gnostic. He elsewhere predicted that the Mormon and Pentecostal strains of American Christianity would overtake mainstream Protestant divisions in popularity in the next few decades. In Omens of Millennium (1996), Bloom identifies these American religious elements as on the periphery of an old – and not inherently Christian – gnostic, religious tradition which invokes a complex of ideas and experiences concerning angelology, interpretation of dreams as prophecy, near-death experiences, and millennialism.Bloom (1996), p. 5.
As in Unsung Voices, Abbate proceeds through a series of case studies, this time exploring works ranging from Mozart's Magic Flute to Wagner's Parsifal and Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande. Abbate's engagement with Jankélévitch also yielded a translation of his La musique et l'ineffable in 2003, as well as a provocative article in Critical Inquiry entitled "Music--Drastic or Gnostic?". The latter offers a reappraisal of the value of hermeneutic musicological scholarship, favoring meditations on music as performance ("drastic") to those on music as encoded meaning ("gnostic").
He expresses his wish to become a "suzerain," one who "rules even when there are other rulers" and whose power overrides all others'. In 2009, Bloom did refer to Boehme in the context of Blood Meridian as, "a very specific type of Kabbalistic Gnostic". Daugherty contends that the staggering violence of the novel can best be understood through a Gnostic lens. "Evil" as defined by the Gnostics was a far larger, more pervasive presence in human life than the rather tame and "domesticated" Satan of Christianity.
He went barefoot and only owned one cloak. He was a teetotaler and a vegetarian, and he often fasted for long periods of time. Although Eusebius goes to great lengths to portray Origen as one of the Christian monastics of his own era, this portrayal is now generally recognized as anachronistic. According to Eusebius, as a young man, Origen was taken in by a wealthy Gnostic woman, who was also the patron of a very influential Gnostic theologian from Antioch, who frequently lectured in her home.
Thelema is a philosophical, mystical and religious system elaborated by Aleister Crowley, and based on The Book of the Law. The word Catholic denotes the universality of doctrine and not a Christian or Roman Catholic belief set. The chief function of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica is the public and private performance of the Gnostic Mass (Liber XV), a eucharistic ritual written by Crowley in 1913. According to William Bernard Crow, Crowley wrote the Gnostic Mass "under the influence of the Liturgy of St. Basil of the Russian Church".
DeConick is a historian of early Jewish and Christian thought. Her work focuses on New Testament and pre-Nicene literature, non- canonical gospels, gnostic literature and movements, mysticism and esotericism in early Christianity, new religious movements past and present, the biosocial study of religion, and a theoretical point of view called post-constructivism. She is known also for her original work on the Gospel of Judas, a Coptic Gnostic gospel rediscovered in 2006. Her work has been called "revisionist," challenging to seek answers beyond the conventional.
In addition, God was believed to rule the world through letters, which held the key to the Great Secret that should be learned. This description suggests that Mazdakism was, in many ways, a typical Gnostic sect.
Alexander Kondratyev's prose included mythological novel Satyress (1907) and collection of mythological stories White Goat (1908), both based on Greek myths. Journeys and Adventures of Nicodemus the Elder (1917) by Aleksey Skaldin is a Gnostic fantasy.
Gnosticism attributed falsehood or evil to the concept of the Demiurge or creator, though in some Gnostic traditions the creator is from a fallen, ignorant, or lesser—rather than evil—perspective, such as that of Valentinius.
Helena and Tau Apiryon The Gnostic Mass: Annotations and Commentary (footnote). Ordo Templi Orientis, 2004. Giordano Bruno was more recently added to the list.Sabazius. "From the Grand Master" in Agape, V. 9, No. 1, p. 3.
There are also important minority religions like the Baháʼí Faith, Yarsanism, Yazidism, Zoroastrianism, Mandaeism, Druze, and Shabakism, and in ancient times the region was home to Mesopotamian religions, Canaanite religions, Manichaeism, Mithraism and various monotheist gnostic sects.
Justin Martyr (c. 100/114 – c. 162/168) wrote the First Apology, addressed to Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius, which criticising Simon Magus, Menander and Marcion. Since then, both Simon and Menander have been considered as 'proto-Gnostic'.
On the other hand, homosexuality was identified with heresy, not only because of the pagan traditions, but also due to the rites of some gnostic sects or Manichaeism, which, according to Augustine of Hippo, practised homosexual rites.
"Attraktivität und Dilemma: Neue religiöse Bewegungen in Russland". RGOW, 2. Institut G2W – Ökumenisches Forum für Glauben, Religion und Gesellschaft in Ost und West. p. 9. as well as also having influences from Hermetic, Gnostic and Eastern traditions.
The Western Aramaic dialect is now only spoken by Muslims and Christians in Ma'loula, Jubb'adin and Bakhah. Mandaic is spoken by up to 75,000 speakers of the ethnically-Mesopotamian Gnostic Mandaean sect, mainly in Iraq and Iran.
G is for Gnostic Andrew Philip Smith on Gnostics (MP3) and several times by Miguel Conner on Aeon Byte, He has contributed articles to New Dawn Magazine, Fortean Times and Mind, Body Spirit published by Watkins Publishing .
Konorski first proposed two key concepts in neuroscience (independently of Western scientists who also suggested them). The grandmother cell of the West which Konorski called "gnostic unit." This was developed in great detail in his 1967 book.
Druze, or Druse, is a monotheistic religion found in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan. Representation ranges from 100,000 in Israel to 700,000 in Syria. Developing from Isma'ilite teachings, Druze incorporates Jewish, Christian, Gnostic, Neoplatonic and Iranian elements.
W. B. Crow quoted in T. Apiryon, Introduction to the Gnostic Mass. Its structure is also influenced by the initiatory rituals of the Ordo Templi Orientis.King, Francis (1973). Secret Rituals of the O.T.O. New York: Samuel Weiser.
Studying Islamology eventually led him to the writings of Henry Corbin (1903–1978) about Shia Islam. Under the guidance of Amadou Hampâté Bâ (/1901–1991), an African gnostic and spiritual leader of the Tijaniyyah, he re-converted to Shia Islam and adopted the name Yahya Alawi (). Bonaud did his doctoral dissertation in French on Ruhollah Khomeini, which was reprinted and published as the book ("Imam Khomeini, an unknown gnostic of the 20th century"). While writing his thesis, he spent seven years in Iran studying under the guidance of Sayyed Jalal-ed-Din Ashtiani.
Irenaeus' Against Heresies, which describes early Gnostic beliefs about Jesus' death which influenced Islam. The view that Jesus only appeared to be crucified and did not actually die predates Islam, and is found in several apocryphal gospels.Joel L. Kraemer Israel Oriental Studies XII BRILL 1992 p. 41 Irenaeus in his book Against Heresies describes Gnostic beliefs that bear remarkable resemblance with the Islamic view: Compare with : It has to be noted, that Islamic tradition held very similar beliefs, that someone else was crucified instead of Jesus, frequently identified as Judas Iscariot or Simon of Cyrene.
T&T; Clark 2014 p21-22Parallels between the Lives of Jesus and Horus, an Egyptian God > Christian ignorance notwithstanding, the Gnostic Jesus is the Egyptian Horus > who was continued by the various sects of gnostics under both the names of > Horus and of Jesus. In the gnostic iconography of the Roman Catacombs child- > Horus reappears as the mummy-babe who wears the solar disc. The royal Horus > is represented in the cloak of royalty, and the phallic emblem found there > witnesses to Jesus being Horus of the resurrection.
A statue of Paul holding a scroll (symbolising the Scriptures) and the sword (perhaps symbolising his martyrdom) Elaine Pagels, professor of religion at Princeton and an authority on Gnosticism, argues that Paul was a Gnostic Pagels, p. 62. and that the anti-Gnostic Pastoral Epistles were "pseudo-Pauline" forgeries written to rebut this. British Jewish scholar Hyam Maccoby contends that the Paul as described in the Book of Acts and the view of Paul gleaned from his own writings are very different people. Some difficulties have been noted in the account of his life.
Gnostic teachings were contemporary with those of Neoplatonism. Gnosticism is an imprecise label, covering monistic as well as dualistic conceptions. Usually the higher worlds of Light, called the Pleroma or "fullness", are radically distinct from the lower world of Matter. The emanation of the Pleroma and its godheads (called Aeons) is described in detail in the various Gnostic tracts, as is the pre-creation crisis (a cosmic equivalent to the "fall" in Christian thought) from which the material world comes about, and the way that the divine spark can attain salvation.
For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness." No specific conclusions have been reached concerning its interpretation and the extent of its direct or indirect relevance to the novel. Critics agree that there are Gnostic elements present in Blood Meridian, but they disagree on the precise meaning and implication of those elements. One of the most detailed of these arguments is made by Leo Daugherty in his 1992 article, "Blood Meridian as Gnostic Tragedy.
" Daugherty argues "Gnostic thought is central to Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian" (Daugherty, 122); specifically, the Persian-Zoroastrian-Manichean branch of Gnosticism. He describes the novel as a "rare coupling of Gnostic 'ideology' with the 'affect' of Hellenic tragedy by means of depicting how power works in the making and erasing of culture, and of what the human condition amounts to when a person opposes that power and thence gets introduced to fate."Daugherty, p. 129. Daugherty sees Holden as an archon, and the kid as a "failed pneuma.
G. R. S. Mead. George Robert Stow Mead (22 March 1863 in Peckham, SurreyGRO index of births 1863 Q2 vol 1d page 525 Camberwell – 28 September 1933 in London)Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Clare Goodrick-Clarke (eds), G. R. S. Mead and the Gnostic Quest, North Atlantic Books, 2005, p. 32. was an English historian, writer, editor, translator, and an influential member of the Theosophical Society, as well as the founder of the Quest Society. His scholarly works dealt mainly with the Hermetic and Gnostic religions of Late Antiquity, and were exhaustive for the time period.
The Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, or Gnostic Catholic Church, is the ecclesiastical arm of O.T.O. Its central activity is the celebration of Liber XV, The Gnostic Mass. In recent years, other rites have been written and approved for use within the church. These include Baptism, Confirmation (into the Laity), and Ordination (for Deacons, Priests & Priestesses, and Bishops), and Last Rites. There are also several "unofficial" rituals that are celebrated within the context of E.G.C., including Weddings, Visitation and Administration of the Virtues to the Sick, Exorcism, and Rites for Life and Greater Feasts.
A characteristic feature of the Gnostic concept of the universe is the role played in almost all Gnostic systems by the seven world-creating archons, known as the (ἑβδομάς). These Seven are in most systems semi-hostile powers, and are reckoned as the last and lowest emanations of the Godhead; below them—and frequently considered as proceeding from them—comes the world of the actually devilish powers. There are indeed certain exceptions; Basilides taught the existence of a "great archon" called Abraxas who presided over 365 archons.Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, i. 24.
The Devil in the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. The Baphomet of Lévi was to become an important figure within the cosmology of Thelema, the mystical system established by Aleister Crowley in the early twentieth century. Baphomet features in the Creed of the Gnostic Catholic Church recited by the congregation in The Gnostic Mass, in the sentence: "And I believe in the Serpent and the Lion, Mystery of Mystery, in His name BAPHOMET" (see: Aleister Crowley: Occult). Lévi's Baphomet is the source of the later Tarot image of the Devil in the Rider-Waite design.
Refutation of objections from the inequalities and injustices of human life (ch. 9). Ridiculous arrogance of the Gnostics who refuse to acknowledge the hierarchy of created gods and spirits and say that they alone are sons of God and superior to the heavens (ch. 9). The absurdities of the Gnostic doctrine of the fall of "Wisdom" (Sophia) and of the generation and activities of the Demiurge, maker of the visible universe (chs. 10–12). False and melodramatic Gnostic teaching about the cosmic spheres and their influence (ch. 13).
Irenaeus of Lyon first used the term "gnostic" in the 2nd century to describe heresies Gnosticism comprised a number of small Christian sects which existed in the 2nd-5th centuries, and were rejected by mainstream Christians as heretics. There were some contacts between Gnostics and Indians, e.g. Syrian gnostic theologian Bar Daisan describes in the 3rd century his exchanges with missions of holy men from India (Greek: Σαρμαναίοι, Sramanas), passing through Syria on their way to Elagabalus or another Severan dynasty Roman Emperor. His accounts are quoted by Porphyry (De abstin.
Religious historian Elaine Pagels criticizes Irenaeus for describing Gnostic groups as sexual libertines, for example, when some of their own writings advocated chastity more strongly than did orthodox texts. However, the Nag Hammadi texts do not present a single, coherent picture of any unified Gnostc system of belief, but rather divergent beliefs of multiple Gnostic sects. Some of these sects were indeed libertine because they considered bodily existence meaningless; others praised chastity, and strongly prohibited any sexual activity, even within marriage.Stark, Rodney. Cities of God, HarperCollins, 2007. chap.
The original Coptic manuscript is now the property of the Coptic Museum in Cairo, Egypt, Department of Manuscripts.Coptic Gnostic Papyri in the Coptic Museum at Old Cairo, vol. I (Cairo, 1956) plates 80, line 10 – 99, line 28.
The Mandaeans believe in purification of souls inside of Leviathan,Das Johannesbuch der Mandäer, ed. and transl. by Mark Lidzbarski, part 2, Gießen 1915, p. 98–99. whom they also call Ur.Hans Jonas: The Gnostic Religion, 3. ed.
The Mandaeans believe in purification of souls inside of Leviathan,Das Johannesbuch der Mandäer, ed. and transl. by Mark Lidzbarski, part 2, Gießen 1915, p. 98–99. whom they also call Ur.Hans Jonas: The Gnostic Religion, 3. ed.
Barcley Owens argues that, while there are undoubtedly Gnostic qualities to the novel, Daugherty's arguments are "ultimately unsuccessful,"Owens, p. 12. because Daugherty fails to address the novel's pervasive violence adequately and because he overstates the kid's goodness.
They rejected the Christianity of the Orthodox churches, though did not accept the docetic teaching of some of the other gnostic sects. They also opposed established forms of government and church as alike to anarchism (see Christian anarchism).
The historian Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo found the name as early as 1492 (in the form aluminados, 1498), and traced the group to a Gnostic origin. He thought their views were promoted in Spain through influences from Italy.
176-8 Doinel resigned and converted to Roman Catholicism in 1895, one of many duped by Léo Taxil's anti- masonic hoax. Taxil unveiled the hoax in 1897. Doinel was readmitted to the Gnostic church as a bishop in 1900.
Both schools attempted "an effort towards conciliation, even affiliation" with late antique philosophy,Schenke, Hans Martin. "The Phenomenon and Significance of Gnostic Sethianism" in The Rediscovery of Gnosticism. E.J. Brill 1978 and were rebuffed by some Neoplatonists, including Plotinus.
This new life is superior to the present way of being. A critical mass of such "gnostic individuals" can create the foundation of a new social life and order. This will lead to a greater unity, mutuality, and harmony.
Hippolytus proceeds to explain and argue against the Gnostics Monoimus, Tatian, and Hermogenes, before digressing from the Gnostic theme to refute the practices of the Quartodecimans.Hippolytus of Rome, Philosophumena, vol. 2. Ed. W.J. Sparrow Simpson, W.K. Lowther Clarke, trans.
MacMullen, "Provincial Languages," pp. 4–5. Other Syriac literature of the time included Christian treatises, dialogues, and apocryphal Acts.MacMullen, "Provincial Languages," p. 5. Some Syriac literature had Gnostic elements, and also played a role in the dissemination of Manicheanism.
The Pistis Sophia, possibly dating as early as the second century, is the best surviving of the Gnostic writings.Hurtak, J.J.; Desiree Hurtak (1999). Pistis Sophia: A Coptic Text of Gnosis with Commentary. Los Gatos, CA: Academy for Future Science.
Martha appears in the sacred gnostic text Pistis Sophia. She is instructed by the risen Christ on several of the repentances that must be made in order to have salvation. She also makes several prophetic interpretations of different Psalms.
A typical page from the 1st book of Jeu The Books of Jeu are two Gnostic texts. Though independent works, both the First Book of Jeu and the Second Book of Jeu appear, in Coptic, in the Bruce Codex.
Tanaka K. 1996. Inferotemporal cortex and object vision. Annu Rev Neurosci 19:109–39. In addition, evidence exists for cells in the human hippocampus that have highly selective responses to gnostic categories including highly selective responses to individual human faces.
Pistis Sophia () is a Gnostic text discovered in 1773,Jones, p. 45. possibly written between the 3rdMead 1921, pp. xxix-xxxviii. and 4th centuries AD.Pearson, p. 74. The existing manuscript, which some scholars place in the late 4th century,Horton, p.
Bardaisan (11 July 154 – 222 AD; , Bardaiṣān), known in Arabic as Ibn Daisan (ابن ديصان) and in Latin as Bardesanes, was a Syriac or ParthianProds Oktor Skjaervo. Bardesanes. Encyclopædia Iranica. Volume III. Fasc. 7-8. . gnostic and founder of the Bardaisanites.
The Gnostic Gospel of Judas, recently found, purchased, held, and translated by the National Geographic Society, also mentions Aeons and speaks of Jesus' teachings about them.The Lost Gospel – online feature from National Geographic, including Coptic text, English translation, and photos .
Jerzy Prokopiuk (born June 5, 1931, in Warsaw, Poland) is a Polish anthroposophist, gnostic, philosopher, and translator of literature. He has translated into Polish works written by Aldous Huxley, Rudolf Steiner, Carl Gustav Jung, Max Weber and many other authors.
DeConick’s book, The Gnostic New Age: How a Countercultural Spirituality Revolutionized Religion from Antiquity to Today, published by Columbia University Press in 2016, won the Figure Foundation Award for the best book published by a university press in philosophy and religion.
In chaos magic, "gnosis" or "the gnostic state" refers to an altered state of consciousness in which a person's mind is focused on only one point, thought, or goal and all other thoughts are thrust out.Hine, Phil. Prime Chaos The gnostic state is used to bypass the "filter" of the conscious mind – something thought to be necessary for working most forms of magic.Carroll, Peter J. Liber Null & Psychonaut Since it takes years of training to master this sort of Zen-like meditative ability, chaos magicians employ a variety of other ways to attain a "brief 'no-mind' state" in which to work magic.
In the Gnostic text On the Origin of the World, possibly dating to the early 4th century,Hans-Gebhard Bethge, Bentley Layton, Societas Coptica Hierosolymitana, "On the Origin of the World (II,5 and XIII,2)," in The Nag Hammadi Library in English: The Definitive New Translation of the Gnostic Scriptures Complete in One Volume (Brill, 1977, rev. ed. 1996), p. 170. the rose was the first flower to come into being, created from the virgin blood of Psyche ("Soul") after she united sexually with Eros.The examples of Attis, Adonis, On the Origin of the World from Miller, The Corporeal Imagination, p. 74.
As with the Gnostic Demiurge, Azazil traps the life-forces of the heavenly realm and captures them in the material realm.Willis Barnstone, Marvin Meyer The Gnostic Bible: Revised and Expanded Edition Shambhala Publications 2009 page 707Christoph Auffarth, Loren T. Stuckenbruck The Fall of the Angels BRILL 2004 page 161 Azazil features as one of the first angels in an Alevi oral tradition, there he is informed by the archangel Cebrail (Gabriel), about their creator. Along with the other archangels, Cebrail leads Azazil to a lamp with seven doors. They shall serve here for 1001 days, so the door will open.
The 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia describes that, in the Catholic Church, "the dualistic hypothesis of an eternal world existing side by side with God was of course rejected" by the thirteenth century, but mind–body dualism was not. The problem of evil is difficult to reconcile with absolute monism, and has prompted some Christian sects to veer towards dualism. Gnostic forms of Christianity were more dualistic, and some Gnostic traditions posited that the Devil was separate from God as an independent deity. The Christian dualists of the Byzantine Empire, the Paulicians, were seen as Manichean heretics by Byzantine theologians.
Prior to the discovery of Nag Hammadi, the Gnostic movements were largely perceived through the lens of the early church heresiologists. Johann Lorenz von Mosheim (1694–1755) proposed that Gnosticism developed on its own in Greece and Mesopotamia, spreading to the west and incorporating Jewish elements. According to Mosheim, Jewish thought took Gnostic elements and used them against Greek philosophy. J.Horn and Ernest Anton Lewald proposed Persian and Zoroastrian origins, while Jacques Matter described Gnosticism as an intrusion of eastern cosmological and theosophical speculation into Christianity. In the 1880s, Gnosticism was placed within Greek philosophy, especially neo- Platonism.
A third, completely revised, edition was published in 1988. This marks the final stage in the gradual dispersal of gnostic texts into the wider public arena—the full complement of codices was finally available in unadulterated form to people around the world, in a variety of languages. A cross-reference apparatus for Robinson's translation and the Biblical canon also exists.Clontz, T.E. and J., The Comprehensive New Testament, Cornerstone Publications (2008), Another English edition was published in 1987, by Yale scholar Bentley Layton, called The Gnostic Scriptures: A New Translation with Annotations (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1987).
This legend of > Yakub—a bigheaded scientist—finds its way into the mythology of the Nation > of Islam, indicating that the founders of the NOI, W. D. Farrad and Elijah > Muhammad, were influenced by the Moorish Science Temple, and were possibly > even members. Harold Bloom in his book The American Religion argues that Yakub combines elements of the biblical God and the Gnostic concept of the Demiurge, saying that "Yakub has an irksome memorability as a crude but pungent Gnostic Demiurge".Bloom, Harold, The American Religion The Emergence of the Post Christian Nation, New York, Simon Schuster, 1992, p. 252.
Before Tipler, the term Omega Point was used by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a paleontologist and Jesuit theologian who saw an evolutionary telos in the development of an encompassing noosphere, a global consciousness. Viewed from the perspective of some Christian thinkers, the idea of mind uploading is asserted to represent a denigration of the human body, characteristic of gnostic manichaean belief. Transhumanism and its presumed intellectual progenitors have also been described as neo-gnostic by non- Christian and secular commentators. The first dialogue between transhumanism and faith was a one-day conference held at the University of Toronto in 2004.
The group was heavily influenced by gnosticism (especially that found in the contemporary book by Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion), and worshipped Sathanas, their name for Satan (Cultus Sathanas is a Latin version of Cult of Satan). Sathanas (or Satan), was defined in gnostic terms, as the Serpent in the Garden of Eden who revealed the knowledge of the true God to Eve. That it called itself "Ophite" is a reference to the ancient gnostic sect of the Ophites, who were said to worship the serpent. The "Lady of Endor" is a reference to the Witch of Endor. Sloane's Coven was first publicly documented in the middle of 1968, when British occult writer Richard Cavendish said that he had received a letter from a Satanist "lodge" in Toledo, OhioWitches reported active in Toledo, Toledo Blade, 3 Dec 1968, p2 and a 1967 interview with Sloane with a Toledo newspaper about his occult & fortune telling business made no mention of it.
According to Lampridius, the emperor Alexander Severus (), himself not a Christian, had kept a domestic chapel for the veneration of images of deified emperors, of portraits of his ancestors, and of Christ, Apollonius, Orpheus and Abraham. Saint Irenaeus, ( 130–202) in his Against Heresies (1:25;6) says scornfully of the Gnostic Carpocratians: On the other hand, Irenaeus does not speak critically of icons or portraits in a general sense—only of certain gnostic sectarians' use of icons. Another criticism of image veneration appears in the non-canonical 2nd-century Acts of John (generally considered a gnostic work), in which the Apostle John discovers that one of his followers has had a portrait made of him, and is venerating it: (27) Later in the passage John says, "But this that you have now done is childish and imperfect: you have drawn a dead likeness of the dead." At least some of the hierarchy of the Christian churches still strictly opposed icons in the early 4th century.
The name Sabaoth appears in the Old Testament in reference to an army. In the First Book of Samuel, the name is used as a name of God. In Gnostic texts, the name should evidently rendered as "over all the forces (of chaos)".
In November 2009 The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross was reprinted in a 40th anniversary edition with a 30-page addendum by Carl Ruck of Boston University.The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, 40th anniversary edition by John M. Allegro, Gnostic Media, 2009.
The bulk of the real novel is the fictional novel, i.e. a retelling of sorts of Philo's story. The story is similar to that presented in the Gospel of Judas, a Gnostic gospel that surfaced around the time of the book's publication.
The congregation enters the temple, the Deacon presents the Law of Thelema, and the Gnostic Creed is recited. The Priestess and the Children enter from a side room. The Priestess raises the Priest from his Tomb, then purifies, consecrates, robes and crowns him.
Manichaeans worshiping the Tree of Life in the Realm of Light. Mid 9th — early 11th century. In the Gnostic religion Manichaeism, the Tree of Life helped Adam obtain the knowledge (gnosis) necessary for salvation and is identified as an image of Jesus.
This high degree of Sufi certainty is the effect of the Emanation of the divine Theophanies in Essence at its existential level and that of the diffusion of the Light of lights (Dazzling Irradiations) at the level of the theophanies of the gnostic.
Pistis Sophia, a Gnostic text discovered in 1773 and possibly written between the 3rd and 4th centuries AD alludes to Zeus. He appears there as one of five grand rulers gathered together by a divine figure named Yew, as the manuscript states.
The most famous of these writings is Adversus haereses (Against Heresies). Irenaeus alludes to coming across Gnostic writings, and holding conversations with Gnostics, and this may have taken place in Asia Minor or in Rome.Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1.pr.2, 4.pr.
The novel draws extensively on Gnosticism, and this system of belief recurs as a plot element throughout the Quintet. Durrell had an interest in Gnosticism from the early 1940s and had studied Gnostic texts.Bowker, Gordon. Through the Dark Labyrinth: A Biography of Lawrence Durrell.
Gnostics tended toward asceticism, especially in their sexual and dietary practice.Layton, Bentley (1987). The Gnostic Scriptures. SCM Press – Introduction to "Against Heresies" by St. Irenaeus In other areas of morality, Gnostics were less rigorously ascetic, and took a more moderate approach to correct behaviour.
MacGrath, Alister E. Christian Theology Blackwell:2001, p.152 Alister MacGrath comments that historically Chadwick's account appears to be much the more plausible. For convenience the heresies which arose in this period have been divided into three groups: Trinitarian/Christological; Gnostic; and other heresies.
27-28 which is fully formed by the supramental power. Division and ignorance are overcome, and replaced with a unity of consciousness. The physical body will be transformed and divinised. The gnostic being sees the spirit everywhere in the world, and in every other person.
Donald Guthrie, New Testament Introduction, p. 622. and it is the view of Timothy Freke, and others, that this involved a forgery in an attempt by the Church to bring in Paul's gnostic supporters and turn the arguments in the other epistles on their head.
Valentinus (also spelled Valentinius; – ) was the best known and, for a time, most successful early Christian gnostic theologian. He founded his school in Rome. According to Tertullian, Valentinus was a candidate for bishop but started his own group when another was chosen.Adversus Valentinianos 4.
Heracleon was a Gnostic who flourished about AD 175, probably in the south of Italy. He is described by Clement of Alexandria (Strom. iv. 9) as the most esteemed (δοκιμώτατος) of the school of Valentinus; and, according to Origen (Comm. in S. Joann. t. ii.
The first passage quoted by Clement bears on an accusation brought against some of the Gnostic sects, that they taught that it was no sin to avoid martyrdom by denying the faith. No exception can be taken to what Heracleon says on this subject.
According to Jerome, the gnostic Christian Basilides also rejected these epistles, and Tatian, while accepting Titus, rejected other Pauline epistles.Guthrie 1990:610 Marcion (c. 140) excluded all three, along with Hebrews, from his otherwise complete Pauline corpus, and it is impossible to determine whether or not he knew of them. Donald Guthrie, for instance, argues that Marcion's theology would have been cause to reject the letters since it was incompatible with certain passages, such as 1 Tim 1:8 and 1 Tim 6:20, while Ehrman suggests that 2nd- century proto-orthodox Christians had motivation to forge the Pastorals to combat the Gnostic use of other Pauline epistles.
Jean Bricaud had been involved with the Eliate Church of Carmel of , the remnants of Fabré-Palaprat's Église Johannite des Chrétiens Primitifs (Johannite Church of Primitive Christians), and the Martinist Order before being consecrated a bishop of the Église Gnostique in 1901. In 1907 Bricaud established a church body that combined all of these, becoming patriarch under the name Tau Jean II. The impetus for this was to use the Western Rite. Briefly called the Église Catholique Gnostique (Gnostic Catholic Church), it was renamed the Église Gnostique Universelle (Universal Gnostic Church, EGU) in 1908. The close ties between the church and Martinism were formalized in 1911.
In May of that year, Smith and Kahl began renting the large house at 1746 Winona Boulevard in Hollywood, and began to take in lodgers to help pay for it. Kahl and Wolfe began using the attic for Thelemic rituals, and in March 1933 they performed their first public Gnostic Mass in the room, hoping to attract interested persons to Thelema. Crowley was pleased with their progress, and asked them to raise funds so that he could afford to visit. The weekly performances of the Gnostic Mass began to attract increasingly large crowds, with their "Crowley Nights" attracting around 150 guests, among them the film star John Carradine.
Van Rijckenborgh propounded his own form of Gnostic Christianity based upon the Rosicrucian Manifestos, Johann Valentin Andreae's works The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz and Rei Christianopolotanae Descriptio and his own wide ranging explorations into hermeticism, alchemy, Freemasonry, the Cathars (thanks in part to his collaboration with neo-Cathar historian Antonin Gadal), Christian Gnosticism and other forms of esoteric study. Taking as his central image of the relationship between the Soul and the Body the Rose Cross he argued for the Transfiguration/Gnostic Rebirth of the Soul in Man, thus achieving a transcendence of the dialectic of ordinary life. The Lectorium was founded to study and proselytize these ideas.
Pistis Sophia recites several prayers/repentances, and after each one a disciple interprets the repentance in light of one of the Psalms or Odes of Solomon. Unlike other versions of the Gnostic myth, such as the Apocryphon of John, here Pistis Sophia is a being of the lower, material aeons. She is not a high, divine being, and her restoration is not to the realms of light, but only back to her place in the thirteenth aeon. This is significant in distinguishing the theology of this book from other Gnostic systems – it prioritizes its own, distinct cosmology and mythology above the Sophia myth, which to this author represents inferior, material struggles.
The People enter into the ritual space, where the Deacon stands at the Altar of Incense (symbolic of Tiphareth on the Tree of Life). She takes the Book of the Law and places it on the super-altar within the great Veil, and proclaims the Law of Thelema in the name of IAO. Returning, she leads the People in the Gnostic Creed, which announces a belief (or value) in the Lord, the Sun, Chaos, Air, Babalon, Baphomet, the Gnostic Catholic Church, the communion of Saints, the Miracle of the Mass (i.e. the Eucharist), as well as confessions of their birth as incarnate beings and the eternal cycle of their individual lives.
A version of the parable also appears in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas (Saying 76): This work's version of the parable of the Hidden Treasure appears later (Saying 109), rather than immediately preceding, as in Matthew.Brad H. Young, The Parables: Jewish Tradition and Christian Interpretation, Hendrickson Publishers, 2008, , pp. 202–206. However, the mention of a treasure in Saying 76 may reflect a source for the Gospel of Thomas in which the parables were adjacent, so that the original pair of parables has been "broken apart, placed in separate contexts, and expanded in a manner characteristic of folklore." In Gnostic thought the pearl may represent Christ or the true self.
The alleged sacred texts of the Cathars, besides the New Testament, included the previously Bogomil text The Gospel of the Secret Supper (also called John's Interrogation), a modified version of Ascension of Isaiah, and the Cathar original work The Book of the Two Principles (possible penned by Italian Cathar John Lugio of Bergamo).The Gnostic Bible, Google Books. They regarded the Old Testament as written by Satan, except for a few books which they accepted, and considered the Book of Revelation not a prophecy about the future, but an allegorical chronicle of what had transpired in Satan's rebellion. Their reinterpretation of those texts contained numerous elements characteristical of Gnostic literature.
The content is heavily Gnostic in that salvation is available only to those who understand the secret knowledge (gnosis), and also shows parallels with the Gospel of Peter, in that the significance of the Crucifixion is somewhat watered down, being considered a part of a heavenly journey, an idea much more in keeping with a Gnostic world-view. The unnamed Saviour (assumed to be Jesus) engages in a dialogue with his apostles that is somewhat more personal than is found elsewhere. And at one point, the cross itself is addressed, as if it is a living creature, a companion rather than a device for death.
One of the unusual features of the Books of Jeu are that they predominantly consist of mystic incantations and similarly esoteric diagrams, often including concentric circles and squares. Like much of Gnostic teaching, it was only designed to be understood once a certain level of understanding was reached, and so appears to the casual observer to be quite obscure as to its meaning or purpose. The text has only been known for a brief time, and so there is not much academic research into them, however it does appear to be the case that the texts are some sort of manual for one or more unknown Gnostic ritual(s).
The name of the text means The First Thought which is in Three Forms (or The Three Forms of the First Thought), and appears to have been rewritten at some point to incorporate Sethian beliefs, when originally it was a treatise from another Gnostic sect. Unusually, the text is in the form of an explanation of the nature of cosmology, creation, and a docetic view of Jesus, in the first person. That is, the text is written as if the writer is God, the three-fold first thought. Like most Gnostic writing, the text is extremely mystical, more so for being in the first person.
Its most notable separation from similar rites of other churches is a Priestess officiating with a Priest, Deacon, and two Children. In addition to the Eucharist, baptism, confirmation, marriage, and last rites are offered by E.G.C. Marriage is not limited to couples of opposite gender. About the Gnostic Mass, Crowley wrote in The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, "... the Ritual of the Gnostic Catholic Church ... I prepared for the use of the O.T.O., the central ceremony of its public and private celebration, corresponding to the Mass of the Roman Catholic Church." It is the single most commonly performed ritual at O.T.O. bodies, with many locations celebrating the Mass monthly or more frequently.
In 1979, Hymenaeus Alpha X° (Grady McMurtry) separated Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica from Ordo Templi Orientis, and made it into an independent organization, with himself at the head of both. During this period of separation Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica published its own quarterly magazine. However, in 1986, his successor, Hymenaeus Beta, dissolved the separate Gnostic Catholic Church corporation and folded the church back into O.T.O. Since then the Church has expanded greatly, and in recent years several books and articles dealing with the E.G.C. and the Gnostic Mass have been published by its Clergy, notably by Tau Apiryon & Tau Helena, James Wasserman & Nancy Wasserman, Rodney Orpheus & Cathryn Orchard, and T Polyphilus.
The Second Apocalypse of James is the fourth tractate placed right after the First Apocalypse of James of what is now known as Codex V. It is believed to have been written around the second century CE, and then buried and lost until it was rediscovered amongst 52 other Gnostic Christian texts spread over 13 codices by an Arab peasant, Mohammad Ali al- Samman, in the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi late in December 1945. The gnostic text contains many Jewish-Christian themes, making many scholars think it to be one of the earlier texts, originally from the early or mid-second century. Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., translation by R. McL.
Accordingly, Michel Weber has proposed a Gnostic interpretation of his late metaphysics.Michael Weber. Contact Made Vision: The Apocryphal Whitehead Pub. in Michel Weber and William Desmond, Jr. (eds.), Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought, Frankfurt / Lancaster, Ontos Verlag, Process Thought X1 & X2, 2008, I, pp. 573–599.
The "resting" of the Holy Spirit at the moment of Jesus' Baptism may also be understood in this timeless sense, as the union and rest of the pre-existent Son with his Father, in keeping with the gnostic conception of "rest" as the highest gift of salvation.
His notable opponents in Hispania were Hyginus, bishop of Cordoba, and Hydatius, bishop of Mérida. They accused Priscillian's teachings of being gnostic in nature. Through his intolerant severity Hydatius promoted rather than prevented the spread of the sect. Hydatius convened a synod held at Zaragoza in 380.
Cecil Frederick Russell (1897–1987) was a 20th-century American occultist. Russell was a member of the A∴A∴ and Aleister Crowley's O.T.O. magical order. Russell later founded his own magical order, the G.B.G. (variously explained as "Great Brotherhood of God" or "Gnostic Body of God").
James settled in Los Angeles, California, in 1886. He joined the Los Angeles branch of the Theosophical Society on July 28, 1887. His brother John was already a member at that time. John later dropped out of the Theosophical Society and founded the Gnostic Society in 1928.
Partial copies of a number of Coptic Bibles survive. A considerable number of apocryphal texts also survive in Coptic, most notably the Gnostic Nag Hammadi library. Coptic remains the liturgical language of the Coptic Church and Coptic editions of the Bible are central to that faith.
Readers have progressed beyond where they can just be told (the authority paradigm); instead, the visionary model gives them the bare essentials and invites them to try it (the Gnostic or experiential model). The best VF is multi-layered to suit readers at different awareness levels.
The Mandaic language, spoken by the Mandaeans of Iraq, is a sister dialect to Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, though it is both linguistically and culturally distinct. Classical Mandaic is the language in which the Mandaeans' gnostic religious literature was composed. It is characterized by a highly phonetic orthography.
In 40.2.2 Epiphanius also mentions that the Archontics "have forged their own apocrypha (...) and by now they also have the ones called the 'Strangers.'"Birger A. Pearson, "Seth in Gnostic Literature" in The Rediscovery of Gnosticism, ed. by Bentley Layton, E.J. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands 1981.
She attended The Gnostic Mass written by Crowley and met Wilfred Talbot Smith and actress Jane Wolfe. She joined the O.T.O. in August 1939 and on June 6, of 1940, became a Probationer of the A∴A∴ under Jane Wolfe, who had studied with Crowley in Cefalu.
British Library Or 4926 (1), known also as P. Lond. Copt. 522 (Crum), is a papyrus codex with a collection of early Christian Gnostic texts in Coptic (sub-Akhmimic dialect). The manuscript has survived in a fragmentary condition. The codex is dated to the 4th century.
Corbin Cyclical Time & Ismaili Gnosis Routledge 2013 p. 154 However, Ismailism were often criticised as non-Islamic. Ghazali characterized them as a group who are outwardly Shias but were actually adherence of a dualistic and philosophical religion. Further traces of Gnostic ideas can be found in Sufi anthropogenic.
Lucille Cedercrans (1921–1984) was an esoteric mystic apparently influenced by ecumenical gnostic theism, particularly (neo-)Theosophy. However, she stated that the source of her writings was the result of a meditative state that put her in rapport with her teacher, whom she referred to as the Master R.
Mandaeans are an ancient ethnoreligious group in southern Iraq. They are the last practicing gnostic sect in the Middle East. There are thought to have been about 40,000 Mandaeans in Iraq prior to the US-led invasion. As a non- Muslim group, they have been abused by sectarian militias.
In the Gnostic Acts of Peter and the Twelve, found with the Gospel of Thomas in the Nag Hammadi library, the travelling pearl merchant Lithargoel is eventually revealed to be Jesus.David Noel Freedman, Allen C. Myers, and Astrid B. Beck, Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, Eerdmans, 2000, , p. 1041.
William Alfred Hawkins (May 20, 1940 - July 4, 2016) was a Canadian songwriter, poet, musician and journalist, most notable for his contributions in the 1960s to Canadian folk rock music and to Canadian poetry. His best known song is "Gnostic Serenade", originally recorded by 3's a Crowd.
William of Newbury says that sermone Gallico Eun diceretur ("in Gallic parlance he was called Eun"), cf. XXXX 328. It appears that Eun, or Yun, was the Old French form of Eudo. The name is not related to a Gnostic tradition or neo-Manichaeanism as Norman Cohn believed, cf.
In "The Thunder, Perfect Mindfuck", it is said "I am the shameless and I am ashamed" as well as "I am falsehood and I am truth". These could be considered paradoxical and controversial as the Gnostic poem the lyrics seem to be based upon, The Thunder, Perfect Mind.
However, the trend among the 21st century scholars has been to accept that while the gnostic gospels may shed light on the progression of early Christian beliefs, they offer very little to contribute to the study of the historicity of Jesus, in that they are rather late writings, usually consisting of sayings (rather than narrative, similar to the hypothesised Q documents), their authenticity and authorship remain questionable, and various parts of them rely on components of the New Testament. The focus of modern research into the historical Jesus has been away from gnostic writings and towards the comparison of Jewish, Greco-Roman and canonical Christian sources.The Historical Jesus of the Gospels by Craig S. Keener 2012 pp.
Until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945, the Askew Codex was one of three codices that contained almost all of the Gnostic writings that had survived the suppression of such literature both in East and West, the other two codices being the Bruce Codex and the Berlin Codex. Aside from these primary sources, everything written about gnosticism before the Nag Hammadi library became available is based on quotes, characterizations, and caricatures in the writings of the enemies of Gnosticism. The purpose of these heresiological writings was polemical, presenting gnostic teachings as absurd, bizarre, and self-serving, and as an aberrant heresy from a proto-orthodox and orthodox Christian standpoint.
This terminology is summed up in Hans Jonas' book within a few pages, titled "Eve and the Serpent", and "Cain and the Creator": > ... it is the serpent that persuades Adam and Eve to taste of the fruit of > knowledge and thereby to disobey their Creator ... Indeed, more than one > gnostic sect derived its name from the cult of the serpent ("Ophites" from > the Gk. ophis; "Naassenes" from the Heb. nahas--the group as a whole being > termed "ophitic")The Gnostic Religion, by Hans Jonas, 1958, p. 93. > This general Serpent is also the wise Word of Eve. This is the mystery of > Eden: this is the river that flows out of Eden.
At the same time the author of this Historia used much older pseudo-Apostolic materials that he abridged or excerpted to suit his purpose. He often revised or expurgated to conform them to Catholic teaching, because many of the writings that he used were originally Gnostic compositions, filled with Gnostic speeches and prayers. The work is of interest because of what the author claims to have drawn from the ancient Acta of the Apostles, and because of many ancient legends which have survived in this collection. The text of the compiler who may then be called the Pseudo-Abdias may be found in Constantin von Tischendorf, and in the Codex Apocryphus Novi Testimenti of Johann Albert Fabricius.
In his essay "Gravers False and True: Blood Meridian as Gnostic Tragedy", literature professor Leo Daugherty argued that McCarthy's Holden is--or at least embodies--a gnostic archon, a kind of demon. Harold Bloom, who declared McCarthy's Holden to be "the most frightening figure in all of American literature", has even come to regard The Judge as immortal. However, unlike Daugherty, Bloom argues that The Judge defies identification as any being under any "system" such as Gnosticism, citing the passage in the book stating that there was no "system by which to divide [The Judge] back into his origins". Rather, Bloom "resort[s]" to literary comparison with Shakespeare's Iago, a methodical dispenser of strife.
A creed is a statement of belief—usually religious belief—or faith. The word derives from the Latin credo for "I believe". The creed of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica—also known as the Gnostic Creed—is recited in the Gnostic Mass, during the Ceremony of the Introit. The text of the Creed is as follows: ::I believe in one secret and ineffable LORD; and in one Star in the Company of Stars of whose fire we are created, and to which we shall return; and in one Father of Life, Mystery of Mystery, in His name CHAOS, the sole vicegerent of the Sun upon the Earth; and in one Air the nourisher of all that breathes.
There is much that is peculiar to the Testament or characteristic of it. First and foremost is its ascription to the Jesus himself, which we can hardly be mistaken in regarding as an attempt to claim yet higher sanction than was claimed by the various compilations which were styled "apostolic", the so-called Church Orders. The whole tone of the Testamentum is one of highly-strung asceticism, and the regulations are such as point by their severity to a small and strictly organized body. They are "the wise", " the perfect", "sons of light"; but this somewhat Gnostic phraseology is not accompanied with any signs of Gnostic doctrine, and the work as a whole is orthodox in tone.
The Apocryphon, set in the framing device of a revelation delivered by the resurrected Christ to John the son of Zebedee, contains some of the most extensive detailing of classic dualistic Gnostic mythology that has survived; as one of the principal texts of the Nag Hammadi library, it is an essential text of study for anyone interested in Gnosticism. Frederick Wisse, who translated it, asserts that "The Apocryphon of John was still used in the eighth century by the Audians of Mesopotamia" (Wisse p 104). The Apocryphon of John has become the central text for studying the gnostic tradition of Antiquity. The creation mythology it details has been studied by Carl Jung and Eric Voegelin.
The dualist religious philosophy of this belief framework worsens Elvis' mental illness; as a Valentinian gnostic, his core religious beliefs are not based on messianic criteria as are those of orthodox Christianity, and he is horrified at the demand of DryCo that he become a virtual messiah that they can use to manipulate the Elvisian faith. He comprehends this as prompting that he become an instrument of the demiurge, the evil and flawed creator of the material world in his gnostic world view. Due to this psychological pressure, his psychosis escalates after he is transferred to Dryco's homeworld. However, his masquerade collides with scepticism at a London "ElCon" (Elvis Convention) religious gathering and there is a riot.
Dating from around 850–900 CE, the Shiva Sutras and Spandakārikā were the first attempt from the Śākta Śaiva domain to present a non-dualistic metaphysics and gnostic soteriology in opposition to the dualistic exegesis of the Shaiva Siddhanta.Sanderson, Alexis. "The Hinduism of Kashmir." 9 June 2009. pg.31-32.
Epiphanius relates some details of the life of Nicolas the deacon, and describes him as gradually sinking into the grossest impurity, and becoming the originator of the Nicolaitans and other libertine Gnostic sects: Hippolytus agreed with Epiphanius in his unfavourable view of Nicolas.Stephen Gobar, Photii Biblioth. §232, p. 291, ed.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, co-founder of the Theosophical Society, wrote extensively on Gnostic ideas. A compilation of her writings on Gnosticism is over 270 pages long.Hoeller (2002) p. 167 The first edition of King's The Gnostics and Their Remains was repeatedly cited as a source and quoted in Isis Unveiled.
His series Echoes of the Gnosis was published in 12 booklets in 1908. By the time he left the Theosophical Society in 1909, he had published many influential translations, commentaries, and studies of ancient Gnostic texts. "Mead made Gnosticism accessible to the intelligent public outside of academia".Hoeller (2002) p.
The Symbolist poet was named bishop of Bordeaux. The dress of Gnostic bishops is characterized by purple gloves and the use of Tau symbol, a Greek letter which is also used before their names. In 1892, Doinel consecrated Papus—founder of the first Martinist Order—as Tau Vincent, Bishop of Toulouse.
Interestingly, also in this Thelemic-Gnostic milieu an Ecclesia Gnostica Universalis eventually rose, in reaction to the Patriarch of E.G.U. binding the clergy of the church to advancement into the degrees of Ordo Templi Orientis, in strict opposition with the original plan laid out by the Prophet of Thelema, Aleister Crowley.
The Tripartite Tractate "was probably written in the early to mid third century." It is a Gnostic work found in the Nag Hammadi library. It is the fifth tractate of the first codex, known as the Jung Codex. It deals primarily with the relationship between the Aeons and the Son.
This awareness eliminates the usual separation between man and life, and between people. One sees that all existences are various forms of the divine reality. Every individual existence in life plays a role in the unfolding of existence. The Gnostic beings can work together to create a new common life.
Bentley, Amy (November 11, 2011). "Agoura Hills author's book on U.S. policies draws notice" Ventura County Star. Retrieved 13 March 2013. She studied Gnostic Kabbalah with Stephan Hoellar at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles and is a former daily contributor to Allvoices writing about tarot and related topics.
When Lewis co-founded FUDOSI (which recognized Lewis's AMORC as the true heirs of American Rosicrucianism), Clymer co-founded FUDOFSI"Gnostic Church" in Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism, ed. Wouter Hanegraaff, Brill Publishers, p.400-403"Martinism: second period" in Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism, ed. Wouter Hanegraaff, Brill Publishers, p.
It was a series of public dialogues hel in Milan with some gnostic or atheist scientists and intellectuals on the matters of bioethics, the social doctrine of the Church and the reasons to believe in God. In 1996, Martini was presented with an honorary doctorate from the Russian Academy of Sciences.
British Summertime is a science fantasy novel by Paul Cornell, first published by Gollancz in 2002. It is Cornell's second (non-tie-in) novel to be published. It is notable for its use of Christian and Gnostic themes; realistic contemporary settings, principally around Bath, Somerset; and complex exploration of time travel.
Irenaeus, Tertullian and Hippolytus of Rome were among the greatest early Christian apologetes who engaged in critical analyses of unorthodox theology, Greco-Roman pagan religions, and Gnostic groups.Avery Dulles, A History of Apologetics, Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1999, pp. 22-58.J.K.S.Reid, Christian Apologetics, Grand Rapids: William Eerdmans, 1970, pp. 36-53.
Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft5. Jahrgang 1997 diagonal-Verlag Ursula Spuler-Stegemann Der Engel Pfau zum Selbstvertändnis der Yezidi p. 14 (german) According to the ancient Gnostic manuscript, the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, Gabriel is a divine being and inhabitant of the Pleroma who existed prior to the Demiurge.
By inference, contemporary historians of Jewish mysticism usually date this development to the third century CE. Again, there is a significant dispute among historians over whether these ascent and unitive themes were the result of some foreign, usually Gnostic, influence, or a natural progression of religious dynamics within rabbinic Judaism.
The story incorporates elements of a Gnostic tradition that speak of a sexual relationship between Jesus and Mary. For this reason, the book has been considered controversial and even blasphemous. The central theme of the work is androgyny. Roberts attempts to incorporate the female perspective into a largely male-dominated tradition.
Sutcliffe has various misadventures in Venice and recalls his failed marriage to Pia, Bruce's sister. "Life with Toby" returns to Bruce and Toby in Avignon, discussing a theory about the Knights Templar. This returns to the Gnostic theme. This section is interrupted by another text in "The Green Notebook," which returns to Sutcliffe.
Markschies, Gnosis, 37 Irenaeus (died c. 202) wrote Against Heresies (c. 180–185), which identifies Simon Magus from Flavia Neapolis in Samaria as the inceptor of Gnosticism. From Samaria he charted an apparent spread of the teachings of Simon through the ancient "knowers" into the teachings of Valentinus and other, contemporary Gnostic sects.
In particular, it refers to the illuminative, mystical sort of wisdom that a Gnostic or Sufi might attain. ;Hilāl (هلال) : Crescent moon. ; (حمى) : wilderness reserve, protected forest, grazing commons; a concept of stewardship ; (حزب) : One half of a juz', or roughly 1/60th of the Qur'an ;Hudā (هدى) : Guidance. ;Hudna (هدنة) : Truce.
The minor orders, interpreters, readers and subdeacons (25) are evidently, as elsewhere in the middle of the 4th century, appointed without sacramental ordination. #The use of exorcised or blessed oil, water and bread is fully illustrated by the lives of the fathers of the desert (cp. the Gnostic use, Clem. Al. Excerpta 82).
The letter describes the gnostic doctrine about the laws of Moses and their relation to the demiurge. The possibility should not be ignored that the letter was composed by Epiphanius, in the manner of composed speeches that ancient historians put into the mouths of their protagonists, as a succinct way to sum up.
The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology. Westminster John Knox Press. p. 166. .Jeffrey Burton Russell, Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages, Cornell University Press 1986 , pp. 187–188 In the Gospel of the Secret Supper, Lucifer, just as in prior Gnostic systems, appears as a demiurge, who created the material world.
With Giovanni Alfonso Borelli he wrote a Latin translation of the 5th, 6th and 7th books of the Conics by the geometrician Apollonius of Perga (1661). Ibrahim was also the first person to identify the Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran as descended from the Gnostic movements going back to the 1st century.
Browne started to give psychic readings in 1974. As of 2008, she charged $750 for a twenty- to thirty-minute telephone session. In 1986, she founded a "Gnostic Christian" church in Campbell, California, known as the Society of Novus Spiritus. She was also head of the Sylvia Browne Corporation and Sylvia Browne Enterprises.
Like the gnostics, the Knights of Seth believe that there is a true God and a false one. The latter is known as the demiurge. According to gnostic tradition the demiurge created the world. In doing so, the demiurge (Classical Greek for craftsman-creator) carried out an order of the true god.
Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, i. 5, 1. Thus Sophia's power becomes enclosed within the material forms of humanity, themselves entrapped within the material universe: the goal of Gnostic movements was typically the awakening of this spark, which permitted a return by the subject to the superior, non-material realities which were its primal source.
As a member of the Rosicrucian Fraternity, he was opposed to Harvey Spencer Lewis' AMORC and FUDOSI. He was enthroned as Patriarch of the Eglise Gnostique Universelle after Jean Bricaud, and succeeded by one of his students, René Chambellant, who maintained the compendium of esoteric societies in cooperation with the Gnostic church.
The Gospel of Truth is one of the Gnostic texts from the New Testament apocrypha found in the Nag Hammadi codices ("NHC"). It exists in two Coptic translations, a Subakhmimic rendition surviving almost in full in the first Nag Hammadi codex (the "Jung Codex") and a Sahidic in fragments in the twelfth codex.
The Qolusta () is the canonical prayer book of the Mandaeans, a Gnostic sect from Iraq and Iran. It was translated into English by E. S. Drower. The Mandaic word qolusta means "collection". The prayerbook is a collection of Mandaic prayers regarding baptisms and other sacred rituals involved in the ascension of the soul.
The Gospel of Mary is often interpreted as a Gnostic text. According to Pheme Perkins, on the basis of thirteen works,The Prayer of the Apostle Paul, the Apocryphon of John, the Nature of the Archons, the Book of Thomas the Contender, The Sophia of Jesus Christ, the Dialogue of the Saviour, the First Apocalypse of James, the Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles, Apocalypse of Peter, Zostrianus, Letter of Peter to Philip, the Gospel of Mary, and Pistis Sophia. the Gospel follows a format similar to other known Gnostic dialogues which contain a revelation discourse framed by narrative elements. The dialogues are generally concerned with the idea of the Savior as reminder to human beings of their bond with God and true identity, as well as the realization of the believer that redemption consists of the return to God and liberty from matter after death. The Gospel of Mary contains two of these discourses (7:1–9:4 and 10:10–17:7) including addresses to New Testament figures (Peter, Mary, Andrew and Levi) and an explanation of sin as adultery (encouragement toward an ascetic lifestyle) which also suit a Gnostic interpretation.
Marcion was a Church leader from Sinope (present-day Turkey), who preached in Rome around 150CE, but was expelled and started his own congregation, which spread throughout the Mediterranean. He rejected the Old Testament, and followed a limited Christian canon, which included only a redacted version of Luke, and ten edited letters of Paul. Some scholars do not consider him to be a gnostic, but his teachings clearly resemble some Gnostic teachings. He preached a radical difference between the God of the Old Testament, the Demiurge, the "evil creator of the material universe", and the highest God, the "loving, spiritual God who is the father of Jesus", who had sent Jesus to the earth to free mankind from the tyranny of the Jewish Law.
Catharose de Petri (1902–1990) Catharose de Petri (real name Henriette Stok Huyser 1902–1990) was a Dutch-born mystic and co-founder of the Lectorium Rosicrucianum, an international esoteric school based on Gnostic ideas of Christianity. Catharose de Petri founded the Lectorium in 1935 with two other Dutch mystics, Jan van Rijckenborgh and his brother Zwier Willem Leene after meeting them as a member of the Dutch branch of Max Heindel's Rosicrucian Fellowship. The three broke away from Heindel's interpretation of the Rosicrucian message to form their own movement, the Lectorium Rosicrucianum. With van Rijckenborgh and Leene Catharose wrote several books on the Gnostic vision of the Lectorium, speaking of a transformation of the inner man through the Christian/Rosicrucian Gnosis.
Many have doubted the orthodoxy of the Odes, suggesting that they perhaps originated from a heretical or gnostic group. This can be seen in the extensive use of the word 'knowledge' (Syr. ; Gk. γνωσις gnōsis), the slight suggestion that the Saviour needed saving in Ode 8:21c ( — 'and the saved (are) in him who was saved') and the image of the Father having breasts that are milked by the Holy Spirit to bring about the incarnation of Christ. In the case of 'knowledge', it is always a reference to God's gift of his self-revelation, and, as the Odes are replete with enjoyment in God's good creation, they seem at odds with the gnostic concept of knowledge providing the means of release from the imperfect world.
Augustine taught traditional Christian views defending humanity's free choice to believe against the deterministic Manichaeans, to which he had belonged for a decade before converting to Christianity. In this pagan group, a non- relational God unilaterally chose the elect for salvation and the non-elect for damnation based upon his own desires. Early church fathers prior to Augustine refuted non-choice predeterminism as being pagan. Out of the fifty early Christian authors who wrote on the debate between free will and determinism, all fifty supported Christian free will against Stoic, Gnostic, and Manichaean determinism and even Augustine taught traditional Christian theology against this determinism for twenty-six years prior to 412 CE. When Augustine started fighting the Pelagians he converted to the Gnostic and Manichaean view.
Egyptologist Gerald Massey wrote in 1881 of what he described as connections between Vedic scripture, ancient Egyptian mythology and the Gospel stories.Gerald Massey Collection-Upper Norwood Joint Library He theorized that the Archon Iao, the "Seven-rayed Sun-God of the Gnostic-stones" was also the "Serpent Chnubis," and "the Second Beast in the Book of Revelation." In 1900, he elaborated further, describing the unity of "the seven souls of the Pharaoh," "the seven arms of the Hindu god Agni," "the seven stars in the hand of the Christ in Revelation," and "the seven rays of the Chaldean god Heptaktis, or Iao, on the Gnostic stones." Samuel Fales Dunlap, wrote in 1894: > Moses was of the race of the Chaldeans.
Gardner states that he had reconstructed elements of the religion from fragments, incorporating elements from Freemasonry, the Occult, and Theosophy, which came together in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where Gardner met Aleister Crowley, whose influence became the basis for Wiccan magical practices. Gerald Gardner was initiated into the O.T.O. by Aleister Crowley and subsequently went on to found the Neopagan religion of Wicca. Various scholars on early Wiccan history, such as Ronald Hutton, Philip Heselton, and Leo Ruickbie concur that witchcraft's early rituals, as devised by Gardner, contained much from Crowley's writings such as the Gnostic Mass. The third degree initiation ceremony in Gardnerian Wicca (including the Great Rite) is derived almost completely from the Gnostic Mass.
The Gnostic Society, was founded for the study of Gnosticism in 1928 and incorporated in 1939 by Theosophists James Morgan Pryse and his brother John Pryse in Los Angeles.Pearson, B. (2007) p. 240Smith (1995) p. 206 Since 1963 it has been under the direction of Stephan Hoeller and operates in association with the Ecclesia Gnostica.
Osborn (1994), pp. 11–12 The third book covers asceticism. He discusses marriage, which is treated similarly in the Paedagogus. Clement rejects the Gnostic opposition to marriage, arguing that only men who are uninterested in women should remain celibate, and that sex is a positive good if performed within marriage for the purposes of procreation.
The oldest texts are lead amulets from about the third century CE, followed by magic bowls from about 600 CE. The important religious manuscripts are not older than the sixteenth century, with most coming from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Edwin Yamauchi (1982). "The Mandaeans: Gnostic Survivors". Eerdmans' Handbook to the World's Religions, Lion Publishing, Herts.
102 The gnosis of the Epistle of Barnabas by no means links it with Gnosticism. On the contrary, it shows "an implicit anti-Gnostic stance": "Barnabas's gnosis can be seen as a precursor of the gnosis of Clement of Alexandria, who distinguished the 'true' gnosis from the 'knowledge falsely so-called' espoused by heretics".
The Christ Files: How Historians Know What They Know About Jesus, John Dickson, p. 95 (Sydney South: Blue Bottle Books, 2006). Kripal writes that "the historical sources are simply too contradictory and simultaneously too silent" to make absolute declarations regarding Jesus' sexuality.Jeffrey John Kripal, The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion, p.
These characteristics combined with his boasting conflates the Jewish god with the devil.M. David Litwa esiring Divinity: Self-deification in Early Jewish and Christian Mythmaking Oxford University Press, 2016 p. 55 His appearance is that of a lion-faced serpent.Fischer-Mueller, E. Aydeet. “Yaldabaoth: The Gnostic Female Principle in Its Fallenness.” Novum Testamentum, vol.
The Primeval Man (Protanthropos, Adam) occupies a prominent place in several Gnostic systems. According to IrenaeusIrenaeus, Adversus Haereses, I, xxix, 3. the Aeon Autogenes emits the true and perfect Anthrôpos, also called Adamas; he has a helpmate, "Perfect Knowledge", and receives an irresistible force, so that all things rest in him. Others sayIrenaeus, I, xxx.
The Gnostic doctrine of the identity of Adam, as the original man, with the Messiah appears in Mani in his teaching of the "Redeeming Christ," who has His abode in the sun and moon, but isAs Kessler, in Herzog's "Realencyclopädie für Protestant. Theologie," 2 ed. ix. 247, has pointed out. identical with the original man.
Palo Alto: Mayfield. 1985. Raymond E. Brown wrote that even though gnostics interpreted John to support their doctrines, the author didn't intend that. The Johannine epistles were written (whether by the author of the Gospel or someone in his circle) to argue against gnostic doctrines.The Community of the Beloved Disciple, Raymond E. Brown, Paulist Press.
In Portugal, the song reached number eight, and in Canada, it peaked at number 16. "Love Boat Captain" also reached the top 30 in Australia and Italy. Louis Pattison of NME called the song "a gorgeous example of Pearl Jam's gnostic expansiveness done right" and stated that it "[ranks] with Pearl Jam's best."Pattison, Louis.
Conze was married twice: to Dorothea Finkelstein and to Muriel Green. He had one daughter with Dorothea. In 1979 Conze self-published two volumes of memoirs entitled Memoirs of a Modern Gnostic. Conze produced a third volume which contained material considered to be too inflammatory or libelous to publish while the subjects were alive.
Axël is a drama by French writer Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, published in 1890. It was influenced by his participation in the Paris Commune, the Gnostic philosophy of Georg Hegel as well as the works of Goethe and Victor Hugo. It begins in an occult castle. The Byronic hero Axël meets a Germanic princess.
Some hold that there is evidence that a form of the Tetragrammaton similar to Jehovah may have been in use in Semitic and Greek phonetic texts and artifacts from Late Antiquity.Roy Kotansky, Jeffrey Spier, "The 'Horned Hunter' on a Lost Gnostic Gem", The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 88, No. 3 (Jul., 1995), p. 318.
Priscillianism is a Christian-inspired belief system developed in the Iberian Peninsula under the Roman Empire in the 4th century by Priscillian. It is derived from the Gnostic-Manichaean doctrines taught by Marcus, an Egyptian from Memphis. Priscillianism was later considered a heresy by both the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church.
There are also a number of major Hindu temples in the United States where Bangladeshi Americans play an important part in the leadership of their congregations. Due to the legacy of Buddhism as well as the Bengal Renaissance, many Bangladeshi Americans continue traditions of humanism and identify as non-religious, secularist, atheist, agnostic, and gnostic.
So also Cainaei (Pseudo-Tertullian, 7), Cainiani (Praedest. Codd.). Irenaeus (i. 31) describes the doctrines of the sect, but gives them no title. were a Gnostic and Antinomian sect known to venerate Cain as the first victim of the Demiurge, the deity of the Tanakh, who was identified by many groups of Gnostics as evil.
The Epistle of the Corinthians to Paul is believed to have been written by an orthodox writer, claiming Apostolic authority against their docetic and gnostic enemies. Despite having been widely recognised as not having been written by Paul in ancient times, for a period this epistle and its response appeared in the Armenian Bible.
In Mandaic soteriology, the soul of the dead, upon entering the House of Life, "receives a garment and a wreath."Willis Barnstone & Marvin Meyer : The Gnostic Bible. Shambhala, Boston, 2003. p. 533 (Here, the "garment" = perispirit; and the "wreath" = halo.) The "metaphor of soul as garment"Alexandar Mihailovics : Corporeal Words : Mikhail Bakhtin's Theology of Discourse.
Since 1988 it has splintered into many groups including the Science of Man in Oregon, which was led by Blighton's wife Ruth until her death in 2005,Mary K. Greer's Tarot Blog: Holy Order of MANS Tarot. July 18, 2008. and the Gnostic Order of Christ, founded by HOOM "Master Timothy" Delbert Harris.Athitakis, Mark.
Mandaean pendant Mandaeism or Mandaeanism ( ') is a monotheistic Gnostic religion. Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enos, Noah, Shem, Aram, and especially John the Baptist. The Mandaean God is named as Hayyi Rabbi meaning The Great Life or The Great Living God. The Mandaeans are Semites and speak a dialect of Eastern Aramaic known as Mandaic.
Some scholars also speculate that the core of the Gospel of Barnabas, beneath a polemical medieval Muslim overlay, may have been based upon an Ebionite or gnostic document.John Toland, Nazarenus, or Jewish, Gentile and Mahometan Christianity, 1718. The existence and origin of this source continues to be debated by scholars. John Arendzen classifies the Ebionite writings into four groups.
Biographers and critics have disagreed whether these years in Jung's life should be seen as "a creative illness", a period of introspection, a psychotic break, or simply madness.Lance S. Owens, "The Hermeneutics of Vision: C. G. Jung and Liber Novus", The Gnostic: A Journal of Gnosticism, Western Esotericism and Spirituality Issue 3, July 2010. Online edition, p.
The Encratites ("self-controlled") were an ascetic 2nd-century sect of Christians who forbade marriage and counselled abstinence from meat. Eusebius says that Tatian was the author of this heresy.Eusebius, Church History: iv. 28, 29 It has been supposed that it was these Gnostic Encratites who were chastised in the epistle of 1 Timothy (4:1-4).
A lion-faced deity found on a Gnostic gem in Bernard de Montfaucon's L'antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures may be a depiction of Yaldabaoth, the Demiurge; however, cf. Mithraic Zervan AkaranaCampbell, Joseph: Occidental Mythology, p. 262. Penguin Arkana, 1991. The term demiurge derives from the Latinized form of the Greek term dēmiourgos, δημιουργός, literally "public or skilled worker".
Gilles Quispel divided Syrian-Egyptian Gnosticism further into Jewish Gnosticism (the Apocryphon of John) and Christian Gnosis (Marcion, Basilides, Valentinus). This "Christian Gnosticism" was Christocentric, and influenced by Christian writings such as the Gospel of John and the Pauline epistles. Other authors speak rather of "Gnostic Christians", noting that Gnostics were a prominent substream in the early church.
The (E.G.C.A.), in Latin (not to be confused with ), or known as the Gnostic Catholic Apostolic Church of North America, which operates in New York, claims the heritage of . This church is in a state of fraternal alliance (concordat) with the Ecclesia Gnostica. Like the latter, it also accepts the ordination of women and same-sex marriage.
The Mysteries is an album composed by John Zorn and performed by Bill Frisell, Carol Emanuel and Kenny Wollesen which was recorded in New York City in December 2012 and released on the Tzadik label in March 2013.Tzadik Catalog, accessed October 17, 2013 The album is the second by the trio following 2012's The Gnostic Preludes.
Adversus Valentinianos, or Against the Valentinians, is a famous refutation of Valentinianism by Tertullian,Seban 1999. p. 947. an orthodox contemporary of the Gnostics and one of the first to investigate them. The work satirized the bizarre elements that appear in Gnostic mythology, ridiculing the Gnostics for creating elaborate cosmologies, with multi-storied heavens like apartment houses.Pagels 1989. pp.
Buddhologist Edward Conze (1966) has proposed that similarities existed between Buddhism and Gnosticism, a term deriving from the name "Gnostics" given to a number of Christian sects. To the extent that the Buddha taught the existence of evil inclinations that remain unconquered, or that require special spiritual knowledge to conquer, Buddhism has also qualified as Gnostic.
Many of them contradict each other on material points and some have obviously been touched up to advance the claims of one or the other branches of the Guru's family, or to exaggerate the roles of certain disciples. Macauliffe compares the manipulation of Janam sakhis to the way Gnostic gospels were manipulated in the times of the early Church.
Irenaeus labeled Marcion this because of Marcion expressing this core gnostic belief, that the creator God of the Jews and the Old Testament was the demiurge. This position, he said, was supported by the ten Epistles of Paul that Marcion also accepted. His writing had a profound effect upon the development of Christianity and the canon.Metzger, Bruce.
The pagan people of Harran identified themselves with the Sabians in order to fall under the protection of Islam. Aramaean and Assyrian Christians remained Christian. Sabians were mentioned in the Qur'an, but those were the group of Mandaeans (a Gnostic sect). The Harranians may have identified themselves as Sabians in order to retain their religious beliefs.
Many mystical currents and movements were prevalent in Islamic Andalusia. Some such as Ibn Barrajan, Ibn Arif and Ibn Qasi give a dynamism to mysticism. Also, the social and spiritual atmosphere of Islamic East- such as Iran, Syria and Iraq- had affected these milieu. Among these conditions are schools such as Avicennism, Suhrevardi and Illumination school, Gnostic, etc.
The Letter of Peter to Philip is a Gnostic Christian epistle found in the Nag Hammadi Library in Egypt. It was dated to be written around late 2nd century to early 3rd century CE and focuses on a post-crucifixion appearance and teachings of Jesus Christ to the apostles on the Mount of Olives, or Mount Olivet.
Old Coptic crosses often incorporate a circle, as in the form called a "Coptic cross" by Rudolf Koch in his The Book of Signs (1933). Sometimes the arms of the cross extend through the circle (dividing it into four quadrants), as in the "Celtic cross". The circle cross was also used by the early Gnostic sects.
There are other numerous Armenian churches belonging to Protestant denominations of all kinds. Through the ages many Armenians have collectively belonged to other faiths or Christian movements, including the Paulicians which is a form of Gnostic and Manichaean Christianity. Paulicians sought to restore the pure Christianity of Paul and in c.660 founded the first congregation in Kibossa, Armenia.
The Druze faith is a monotheistic Abrahamic religion that is a gnostic offshoot and Neoplatonist sect of Isma'ilism, a branch of Shia Islam. The Druze self-identify as an independent faith separate from Islam. The Druze follow a batini or esoteric interpretation of the Five Pillars of Islam. Some modern scholars and the Amman Message identify them as Muslims.
Later in 1936, Smith and Jacobi's employer, the Southern California Gas Company, discovered their involvement in the Lodge, demoting Smith to bookkeeper and firing Jacobi. Angered, Jacobi left the Lodge altogether, while Smith shut down the group's private ritual activities for the next three years. As a result, the public attendance of the Gnostic Mass plummeted.
Casey rejects the idea of Mary Magdalene as Jesus's wife as nothing more than wild popular sensationalism. Kripal writes that "the historical sources are simply too contradictory and simultaneously too silent" to make absolute declarations regarding Jesus' sexuality.Jeffrey John Kripal, The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion, p. 52 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007).
A History of Conversion to Islam in the United States, Volume 1: White American Muslims Before 1975. Brill. p. 149. He visited Helena Blavatsky in Europe. He founded the Gnostic Theosophical Society of Washington, and in 1890 became the president of the Theosophical Society. He later became highly critical of Blavatsky and lost interest in the Theosophical movement.
Plato, in his dialogue Timaeus, describes a creation myth involving a being called the demiurge ( "craftsman"). Neoplatonism and Gnosticism continued and developed this concept. In Neoplatonism, the demiurge represents the second cause or dyad, after the monad. In Gnostic dualism, the demiurge is an imperfect spirit and possibly an evil being, transcended by divine Fullness (Pleroma).
15-17 He also studied mystic Judaism and Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, the Chinese classics, and the Gnostic writings during that time under direct disciples of Khalil Gibran and Paul Brunton.Project X: The Explorations, 1987, pp. 13-19 In 1956 Savoy’s life changed utterly. His business collapsed and took with it his home, his belongings, and his marriage.
Gnosticism scholar Elaine Pagels goes further and claims that the author himself was a Gnostic, citing similarities with the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip.Pagels, Elaine, 2003. Beyond Belief, , pp 115–117. – See also the response at Filson, Sanders, Vernard Eller, Rudolf Steiner, and Ben Witherington suggest Lazarus, since and specifically indicates that Jesus "loved" him.
Irenaeus tells us that "the holy Hebdomad is the seven stars which they call planets".Irenaeus, Against Heresies i. 30. It is safe, therefore, to take the above seven Gnostic names as designating the seven planetary divinities, the sun, moon and five planets. In the Mandaean system the Seven are introduced with the Babylonian names of the planets.
92 noted for the usage of Gnostic and Bogomil symbols in an otherwise Orthodox context.Ștefan Starețu, "Ortodoxia și dinastia sfântă în Balcani în secolele XIV–XV", in Revista STUDIUM, Vol. VIII, Supplement 1/2015, p. 44 Church historian Mircea Pahomi advances the hypothesis that Arbore used Italian stonemasons and painters for at least some of this work.
Bogin, 145. The language is religious in some places (gran penedenza, great penitence) and in others colloquial (las tetinhas, the breasts). Carenza's reference to marriage with Coronat de Scienza ("Crowned with Knowledge") has raised eyebrows. The obscure phrase is perhaps a Cathar or Gnostic name for Jesus Christ, but perhaps just a colourfully orthodox senhal (signifier) for God.
Perhaps one of the most notable factors of this sage is the claim that he supposedly attained a divinization of the physical body. He attained a total of 3 transformations (i.e. transformations into Pure Body, Pranava (Sound) Body, and Gnostic Body). His first transformation was the transformation of his normal human body into the Perfect Body.
Marsanes is a Sethian Gnostic text from the New Testament apocrypha. The only surviving copy comes from the Nag Hammadi library, albeit with four pages missing, and several lines damaged beyond recovery, including the first ten of the fifth page. Scholars speculate that the text was originally written by a Syrian in Greek during the third century.
Allogenes is a repertoire, or genre, of mystical Gnostic texts dating from the first half of the Third Century, CE. They concern Allogenes, "the Stranger" (or "foreigner"),Greek: (allogenēs), used in the Septuagint, meaning "[from a] different family/nation" a half-human, half-divine capable of communicating with realms beyond the sense-perceptible world, into the unknowable.
The Thought of Norea is a brief Sethian Gnostic text. The main surviving copies come from the Nag Hammadi library. The Thought of Norea is sometimes considered to belong to the New Testament apocrypha. It is one of the shorter texts of the Nag Hammadi collection and is estimated to have been written in the second century C.E.
Herod Antipas was tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, a client state of the Roman Empire. He ruled from 4 BC to 39 AD. In refuting Gnostic claims that Jesus preached for only one year after his baptism, Irenaeus used the "recapitulation" approach to demonstrate that by living beyond the age of thirty Christ sanctified even old age.
J. Menard produced a summary of the academic consensus in the mid-1970s which stated that the gospel was probably a very late text written by a Gnostic author, thus having very little relevance to the study of the early development of Christianity. Scholarly views of Gnosticism and the Gospel of Thomas have since become more nuanced and diverse.April D. De Conick (2006) The original Gospel of Thomas in translation pages 2–3 Paterson Brown, for example, has argued forcefully that the three Coptic Gospels of Thomas, Philip and Truth are demonstrably not Gnostic writings, since all three explicitly affirm the basic reality and sanctity of incarnate life, which Gnosticism by definition considers illusory and evil. In the 4th century Cyril of Jerusalem considered the author a disciple of Mani who was also called Thomas.
Van Oort’s study of Augustine and the sources for his theology has made him a specialist in Gnostic Studies as well, particularly in the gnostic-Christian world church of Mani (216-276/7). He has served as member of the International Association of Manichaean Studies first as secretary (1993-2001) and subsequently as president (2001-2009). In this capacity he was one of the scholars who took initiative to publish the many Manichaean sources that were at the time scattered throughout the world, in the Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum, a project that gained wide support among academies of science and UNESCO. Van Oort is member of diverse international organisations and academies of science, and was a Visiting Professor at Oxford University, University of London and Warwick University in service to the British Academy from 1998-1999.
Events organized by ISHK include a symposium in 2006 on "The Core of Early Christian Spirituality: Its Relevance to the World Today" which featured presentations by Elaine Pagels, well known for her studies and writing on the Gnostic Gospels (Beyond Belief: A Different View of Christianity); New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman (Jesus and the Apocalyptic Vision), and scholar of religion and Professor, Marvin Meyer (Magdalene in the Gnostic Gospels: From the Gospel of Mary to the DaVinci Code, Mary Magdelene in History and Culture). In 1976, Robert Ornstein and Idries Shah presented a seminar, Traditional Esoteric Psychologies in Contemporary Life, in cooperation with The New School, New York City. Psychologies - East and West Seminar: May 1976. In 2010, ISHK set up a web site for a project entitled The Human Journey.
Two of the most well known are The Mass of the Phoenix and The Gnostic Mass. The first is a ritual designed for the individual, which involves sacrificing a "Cake of Light" (a type of bread that serves as the host) to Ra (i.e. the Sun) and infusing a second Cake with the adept's own blood (either real or symbolic, in a gesture reflecting the myth of the Pelican cutting its own breast to feed its young) and then consuming it with the words, "There is no grace: there is no guilt: This is the Law: Do what thou wilt!" The other ritual, The Gnostic Mass, is a very popular public ritual (although it can be practiced privately) that involves a team of participants, including a Priest and Priestess.
In the early centuries AD, the ouroboros was adopted as a symbol by Gnostic Christians and chapter 136 of the Pistis Sophia, an early Gnostic text, describes "a great dragon whose tail is in its mouth". In medieval alchemy, the ouroboros became a typical western dragon with wings, legs, and a tail. In the Bible, King Nahash of Ammon, whose name means "Snake", is depicted very negatively, as a particularly cruel and despicable enemy of the ancient Hebrews. Medusa (1597) by the Italian artist Caravaggio Imperial Japan depicted as an evil snake in a WWII propaganda poster "The Smoking Snake", insignia of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force in WWII The ancient Greeks used the Gorgoneion, a depiction of a hideous face with serpents for hair, as an apotropaic symbol to ward off evil.
The treatise begins with a fragment of cosmogony, which leads to a revisionistic "true history" of the events in the Genesis creation story, reflecting Gnostic distrust of the material world and the demiurge that created it. Within this narrative there is an "angelic revelation dialogue" where an angel repeats and elaborates the author's fragment of cosmogonic myth in much broader scope, concluding with historical prediction of the coming of the savior and the end of days.Layton (1995) 65 Although the etymologies and puns on Semitic names suggest the author's close contact with Jewish legends and interpretive traditions as well as knowledge of Greek mythology and Hellenistic cult practices, the myth is, according to Bentley Layton purposefully anti-Judaic.Layton (1995) 65 In addition, arguably, the work contains no Christian anti-Gnostic characteristics.
Another character, Aubrey Blanford, is noted briefly as having recently published a novel and gained fame from it. The second chapter, "Macabru," recounts Bruce, Piers, and Sylvie's journey into Egypt years earlier. There they meet Akkad, who initiates them into a Gnostic cult. Akkad takes them to Macabru, an oasis in the desert, to introduce them to the cult's rituals.
In Harleian Ms. 6482, entitled "The Rosie Crucian Secrets",Printed by the Aquarian Press, 1985 Thomas Rudd lists Cimeries as the 26th spirit made use of by King Solomon. He also attributes an angel Cimeriel to one of Dee's Enochian Ensigns of Creation, the tablet of 24 mansions.McLean, Treatise on Angel Magic. The earliest mention of Chamariel is in Rossi's Gnostic tractate.
Singer moved to Palo Alto in 1980, working at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and joining the San Francisco Jung Institute and the local Gnostic church. In 1987, Singer married Dr. Irving Sunshine, with whom she returned to California and later retired in Ohio.Barbara Sherlock, "Dr. June Singer, 85: Psychologist who made Jung known in Chicago", Chicago Tribune, February 4, 2004.
Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2010. Brill Online. Augustana. 3 April 2010 ‘Araghi was both a member of the school of Persian Sufi poetry but also has been identified with the Ibn Arabian school of Sufism. However, ‘Iraqi was also a Gnostic who often spoke in the language of love.
However, Gnosticism is a diverse, syncretistic religious movement consisting of various belief systems generally united in a belief in a distinction between a supreme, transcendent God and a blind, evil demiurge responsible for creating the material universe, thereby trapping the divine spark within matter. Gnosticism is not limited to Christianity, and may be based on other Abrahamic beliefs.Pagels, Elaine (1989). The Gnostic Gospels.
Gnosis refers to knowledge based on personal experience or perception. In a religious context, gnosis is mystical or esoteric knowledge based on direct participation with the divine. In most Gnostic systems, the sufficient cause of salvation is this "knowledge of" ("acquaintance with") the divine. It is an inward "knowing", comparable to that encouraged by Plotinus (neoplatonism), and differs from proto-orthodox Christian views.
Sogdian. Manuscript from Khocho, Tarim Basin. Manichaeism was founded by the Prophet Mani (216–276). Mani's father was a member of the Jewish-Christian sect of the Elcesaites, a subgroup of the Gnostic Ebionites. At ages 12 and 24, Mani had visionary experiences of a "heavenly twin" of his, calling him to leave his father's sect and preach the true message of Christ.
From Ophion's teeth sprang Pelasgus who taught man all the arts and crafts. This particular interpretation shares many similarities with some Gnostic traditions, with the Demiurge, often represented in the form of a serpent (as with Yaldabaoth), claiming to have created the world alone despite the assistance of others - often Sophia, who is associated with doves through the Holy Spirit.
The term was invented by Leonid Sabaneyev. Scriabin himself called it the "chord of the pleroma" (аккорд плеромы akkord pleromy), which "was designed to afford instant apprehension of -that is, to reveal- what was in essence beyond the mind of man to conceptualize. Its preternatural stillness was a gnostic intimation of a hidden otherness.""Chernomor to Kashchei: Harmonic Sorcery; Or, Stravinsky's 'Angle'".
Count of St. Germain by unknown artist According to some researchers, Christian Rosenkreuz was the last descendant of the Germelshausen, a German family which flourished in the 13th century.Maurice Magre (1877–1941). Magicians, Seers, and Mystics Their castle stood in the Thuringian Forest on the Border of Hesse and they had embraced Albigensian (i.e., Cathar) doctrines, combining Gnostic and Christian beliefs.
"Latin" is the official language of Rome, which specifically is also that of the Roman Catholic Church. Irenaeus also discusses at lengthHaer., I, viii, 5 and 12, and II, xxxiv, 4. the Gnostic numerical interpretation of the holy name "Jesus" as the equivalent of 888, and he claims that by writing the name in Hebrew characters an entirely different interpretation is necessitated.
Mar's first book, Witches of America, was published in 2015. It was a New York Times Notable Book for 2015. The book is both a memoir and an exploration of contemporary occult practice in the United States. The book traces a brief history of contemporary occult practice, from Aleister Crowley and the Ordo Templi Orientis to contemporary Gnostic Masses held in New Orleans.
The Naassenes (Greek Naasseni, possibly from Hebrew נָחָשׁ naḥash, snake)Hippolytus Philosophumena 5, 6 or para 139. Hippolytus says 'for the serpent is called naas', which the translator says is 'naḥash'. were a Christian Gnostic sect known only through the writings of Hippolytus of Rome. The Naassenes claimed to have been taught their doctrines by Mariamne, a disciple of James the Just.
In clusters such as ps-, pn-, and gn- which are not allowed by English phonotactics, the usual English pronunciation drops the first consonant (e.g., psychology) at the start of a word; compare gnostic [nɒstɪk] and agnostic [ægnɒstɪk]; there are a few exceptions: tmesis [t(ə)miːsɪs]. Initial x- is pronounced z. Ch is pronounced like k rather than as in "church": e.g.
The Catholic bishopric of Palencia was founded in the 3rd century or earlier,Flórez, España Sagrada, vol. viii. assuming that its bishop was among those assembled in the 3rd century to depose Basilides, bishop of Astorga. Priscillianism, which originated in Egypt but flourished in Spain was declared a heresy by the emperor Gratian. Prisciallinists held orthodox Catholic beliefs with Gnostic/Montanist influences.
The Nag Hammadi library is a collection of early Christian Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. That year, twelve leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by a local peasant named Mohammed Ali Samman.The Nag Hammadi Library: The Minor History Behind a Major Discovery Meyer and Robinson,. pp 2–3.
The scene in John in which "doubting Thomas" ascertains that the resurrected Jesus is physical refutes the Gnostic idea that Jesus returned to spirit form after death. The written gospel draws on an earlier oral tradition associated with Thomas. Some scholars argue that the Gospel of John was meant to oppose the beliefs of that community.Beyond Belief, Elaine Pagels, 2003.
According to Mary Magdalene (, 1997) is a novel by the Swedish novelist Marianne Fredriksson. It attempts to portray the life of the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene as told by herself. The author claims to have based the book on Gnostic manuscripts, such as the Gospel of Mary, that were discovered in recent times. The English version was published 1999.
Serapion also acted (Pantaenus supported him) against the influence of Gnosticism in Osroene by consecrating Palut as bishop of Edessa, where Palut addressed the increasingly Gnostic tendencies that the churchman Bardesanes was introducing to its Christian community. He ordained Pantaenus as a Priest or Bishop in Edessa. Serapion was succeeded as bishop of Antioch by Asclepiades (Eusebius Historia ecclesiastica VI, 11, 4).
Sebastian, or Ruling Passions (1982), is the fourth volume in The Avignon Quintet series by British author Lawrence Durrell, which was published from 1974 to 1985. This novel is set mainly in Switzerland immediately after World War II. It continues the story of Constance and a Gnostic cult, which was introduced in the first novel of the quintet, Monsieur (1974).
A letter informs the Egyptian Sebastian Affad that he will die; a mix up has caused major ructions within the Gnostic sect in Egypt. Affad is called back to Egypt for admonishment. Before leaving Switzerland, however, he has asked Constance to use her psychiatric skills to treat his son, who has become autistic. She is gradually successful in working with the boy.
Ambrose of Alexandria (before 212 – c. 250) was a friend of the Christian theologian Origen. Ambrose was attracted by Origen's fame as a teacher, and visited the Catechetical School of Alexandria in 212. At first a gnostic Valentinian and Marcionist, Ambrose, through Origen's teaching, eventually rejected this theology and became Origen's constant companion,Origen, Epistle to Sextus Julius Africanus vol. i. p.
With loose Parthian rule restored, Assyria and its patchwork of states continued much as they had before the Roman interregnum, although Assyria and Mesopotamia as a whole became a front line between the Roman and Parthian empires. Other new religious movements also emerged in the form of gnostic sects such as Mandeanism, as well as the now extinct Manichean religion.
Ruha Qadishta is described as a liar and sorcerer. Several Abrahamitic prophets are regarded as servants of these devils or their subordinates such as Adonai, including Moses.Willis Barnstone, Marvin Meyer The Gnostic Bible: Revised and Expanded Edition Shambhala Publications 2009 p. 553 Jesus appears as another son of Ruha Qadishta and Ur, who distorted the Baptism-ritual thought by John the Baptist.
The Simonians were a Gnostic sect of the 2nd century which regarded Simon Magus as its founder and traced its doctrines, known as Simonianism, back to him. The sect flourished in Syria, in various districts of Asia Minor and at Rome. In the 3rd century remnants of it still existed, which survived until the 4th century.Origen, Contra Celsum, I, 57; VI, 11.
It does not appear that the Oriental philosophy, or the earliest Gnostic systems, recognised any place higher than the eighth sphere; and it is here that according to the account of Epiphanius (Haer. 26, p. 91) dwelt Barbelo the mother of all. But Grecian philosophy came to teach that above the sensible world there lay a still higher, and Clem. Alex. (iv.
The Gospel of Philip is a text that reveals some connections with Early Christian writings of the Gnostic traditions. It is a series of logia or aphoristic utterances, most of them apparently quotations and excerpts of lost writings, without any attempt at a narrative context. The main theme concerns the value of sacraments. Scholars debate whether the original language was Syriac or Greek.
Moira Crone, American fiction author Moira Crone (born 1952) is an American fiction author. She was born and raised in Goldsboro, in the tobacco country in eastern North Carolina. She is the author of three collections of short fiction and two novels. Her short stories have been classified as "Southern Gnostic", and as exemplifying the spirit of the New South.
IVP: 1990 p935 According to Epiphanius, one Caius of Rome believed that Cerinthus, a Gnostic, was the author of the Book of Revelation.Cerinthus at CCEL.org In the 3rd century, Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria rejected apostolic authorship, but accepted the book's canonicity. Dionysius believed that the author was another man also named John, John the Presbyter, teacher of Papias, bishop of Hieropolis.
Their identity has been called an "unsolved Quranic problem". Interest in the identity and history of the group increased over time. Discussions and investigations of the Sabians began to appear in later Islamic literature. The Sabians were identified by early writers with the ancient Jewish Christian group the Elcesaites, and with gnostic groups such as the Hermeticists and the Mandaeans.
Some Gnostics, however, were docetics, believed that Jesus did not have a physical body, but only appeared to possess one. Manichaeism, a Gnostic sect, accepted Jesus as a prophet, in addition to revering Gautama Buddha and Zoroaster. In the Druze faith, Jesus is considered one of God's important prophets. Some Hindus consider Jesus to be an avatar or a sadhu.
Sæther became an ordained reverend of the gnostic church in December 1988 by the regional bishop Stephan A. Hoeller of Ecclesia Gnostica in California.Hill, A.W.: "Exile in Godville: Profile of a postmodern heretic", L.A. Weekly, 19–25 May 2005 He has led a Norwegian congregation during later years.Gilhus, Ingvild Sælid and Einar Thomassen: "Forord", Gnostiske skrifter, page x. De Norske bokklubbene, 2002.
The native Chaldeans have dealt with a century long dispersion of its people. Another ethnic group are the Mandeans, who numbered around 70,000 before the current war. Now, the last practising Gnostic sect in the Middle East has almost entirely left Iraq. During the first Gulf War, Iran provided refuge for 1.4 million Iraqis, though many did not settle there permanently.
The Gospel of the Four Heavenly Realms is a lost text from the New Testament apocrypha. The content has been surmised from various descriptions of it in ancient works by church fathers. It is thought to be a gnostic text, in which aspects of their esoteric cosmology were expounded, probably framed in the form of a dialogue between Jesus and the Apostles.
Afterwards, they went down to the living room and were entertained with refreshments and good conversation. Again the invitation to the Mass was given. Then Wilfred Talbot Smith quoted some Crowley's poetry. Seckler was attracted by an atmosphere and took the occasion to attend the Gnostic Mass several times that summer, often with Paul Seckler who later became her husband, or another friend.
The Bishops of the contemporary Church have developed rituals for all of these purposes, as well as infant benedictions, consecration of holy oil, funerals, and home administration of the Eucharist to the sick. Although some Gnostic Masses are held privately for initiates only, there is nothing 'secret' about E.G.C. rituals as such, and they are commonly open to the public.
II, Ch. XLVIII Albert Pike and Madame Blavatsky studied Gnostic thought extensively and were influenced by it, and even figures like Herman Melville and W. B. Yeats were more tangentially influenced.Smith, Richard. "The Modern Relevance of Gnosticism" in The Nag Hammadi Library, 1990 Jules Doinel "re-established" a Gnostic church in France in 1890, which altered its form as it passed through various direct successors (Fabre des Essarts as Tau Synésius and Joanny Bricaud as Tau Jean II most notably), and, though small, is still active today.Cf. l'Eglise du Plérôme Early 20th-century thinkers who heavily studied and were influenced by Gnosticism include Carl Jung (who supported Gnosticism), Eric Voegelin (who opposed it), Jorge Luis Borges (who included it in many of his short stories), and Aleister Crowley, with figures such as Hermann Hesse being more moderately influenced.
Tartarus occurs in the Septuagint translation of Job into Koine Greek, and in Hellenistic Jewish literature from the Greek text of 1 Enoch, dated to 400–200 BC. This states that God placed the archangel Uriel "in charge of the world and of Tartarus" (20:2). Tartarus is generally understood to be the place where 200 fallen Watchers (angels) are imprisoned.Kelley Coblentz Bautch A Study of the Geography of 1 Enoch 17–19: "no One Has Seen what I Have Seen" p134 In Hypostasis of the Archons (also translated 'Reality of the Rulers'), an apocryphal gnostic treatise dated before 350 AD, Tartarus makes a brief appearance when Zōē (life), the daughter of Sophia (wisdom) casts Ialdabaōth (demiurge) down to the bottom of the abyss of Tartarus.Bentley Layton The Gnostic Scriptures: "Reality of the Rulers" 95:5 p.
Elaine Pagels, née Hiesey (born February 13, 1943), is an American religious historian. She is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Pagels has conducted extensive research into early Christianity and Gnosticism. Her best-selling book The Gnostic Gospels (1979) examines the divisions in the early Christian church, and the way that women have been viewed throughout Jewish history and Christian history.
In Scientology, Operating Thetan (OT) is a spiritual state above Clear. It is defined as "knowing and willing cause over life, thought, matter, energy, space and time (MEST)."The State of Operating Thetan (Church of Scientology) According to religious scholar J. Gordon Melton, "[i]t's basically a variation of the Gnostic myth about souls falling into matter and the encumbrances that come with that".
The name of Kakasbos seems to be written – in a distorted manner – on a gnostic gem, but the inscription is unique and cannot be linked to the deity. Figurines looking like an unidentified club bearing rider god were found in a temple in Sagalassos. However, several historians asserted that it was probably not Kakasbos, and that the temple was not dedicated to the Anatolian rider god.
"Nag Hammadi and the New Testament", New Testament Studies, vol. 28, (1982), p. 292. According to James M. Robinson, no gnostic texts clearly pre-date Christianity, and "pre-Christian Gnosticism as such is hardly attested in a way to settle the debate once and for all."J. M. Robinson, "Jesus: From Easter to Valentinus (Or to the Apostles' Creed)", Journal of Biblical Literature, 101 (1982), p. 5.
The Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (E.G.C.) descended from a line of the above-mentioned 19th-century French Gnostic Revival Churches (see Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica#History). These , as well as the , are essentially Christian in nature, except for the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica. Although Gnosticism is seen as heresy in an orthodox Christian sense, the E.G.C. goes even further by worshipping such figures like Babalon, Baphomet, et cetera.
The journal Zhiva-Astra issued by the Ynglist Church has published Gnostic scriptures that are popular among Russian nationalists. Ynglists say that early Slavic volkhvs were aware of the concepts of a supreme God and of the trinity, which were later borrowed by Christian organisations. Like other Rodnover groups, Ynglists consider Christianity as an anti-national international machination aimed at the enslavement of people, chiefly Russians.
Hylic (from Greek (hylē) "matter") is the opposite of psychic (from Greek (psychē) "soul"). In the gnostic belief system, hylics, also called somatics (from Gk (sōma) "body"), were the lowest order of the three types of human. The other two were the psychics and the pneumatics (from Gk (pneuma) "spirit, breath"). So humanity comprised matter-bound beings, matter-dwelling spirits and the matter-free or immaterial souls.
She is a being of the material aeons, and her restoration is only as far as the thirteenth material aeon. The myth as a whole seems to have been adopted to address the beliefs of another Gnostic group, and to assert the superiority of this text's system: humans who receive the mysteries of this group can surpass Pistis Sophia and reach the divine realms of light.
940), a treatise by Cosmas the Priest (c.970) and the anti-Bogomil council of Emperor Boril of Bulgaria (1211). Bogomilism was a neo-Gnostic and dualist sect that believed that God had two sons, Jesus Christ and Satan, that represented the two principles good and evil. God had created light and the invisible world, while Satan rebelled and created darkness, the material world and man.
Holey was the middle child of a wealthy family. His mother called herself a clairvoyant, and his father wrote three books dealing with gnostic and esoteric subject matter. Holey claims to have attended schools in Crailsheim, Bammental (near Heidelberg), Cambridge (in the United Kingdom), and Munich. Holey chose his nom de plume "van Helsing", after he read Bram Stoker's vampire-novel Dracula at the age of fourteen.
"Marcion and Marcionite Gnosticism ", Cky J. Carrigan, Ph.D., On Truth, November 1996. Marcion argued that Christianity should be solely based on Christian Love. He went so far as to say that Jesus' mission was to overthrow Demiurge—the fickle, cruel, despotic God of the Old Testament—and replace Him with the Supreme God of Love whom Jesus came to reveal. Marcion was labeled a gnostic by Irenaeus.
The 48th epistle of the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity features a fictional Arabic narrative. It is an anecdote of a "prince who strays from his palace during his wedding feast and, drunk, spends the night in a cemetery, confusing a corpse with his bride. The story is used as a gnostic parable of the soul's pre-existence and return from its terrestrial sojourn".
Menhaj Al-Sadeghin is a fifteenth-century exegesis of the Quran in Persian in 10 volumes by Molla Fathollah Kashani. This commentary contains moral and Gnostic subjects and it is considerable from the viewpoint of allegory and testifying to Persian poems. The commentary was compiled between 1492 and 1494. An old manuscript of this book dated 1575 C.E. is kept in Astan Quds Razavi’s library.
87 and note 37 and also promulgated by the 18th century secret society called the "Golden and Rosy Cross", the Rosicrucian Order was created in the year 46 when an Alexandrian Gnostic sage named Ormus and his six followers were converted by one of Jesus' disciples, Mark. Their symbol was said to be a red cross surmounted by a rose, thus the designation of Rosy Cross.
In 1988, J. Z. Knight founded Ramtha's School of Enlightenment (RSE), then called Ramtha's School of Enlightenment: The American Gnostic School, on her estate in Yelm, Washington. A division of Knight's company JZK, Inc., the school had around 80 staff members . According to RSE's website, it is an "academy of the mind that offers retreats and workshops to people of all ages and cultures".
The Gospel of Judas, a Gnostic gospel, also received much media attention when it was reconstructed in 2006. Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians as well as Protestants generally agree on the canon of the New Testament, see Development of the New Testament canon. The Ethiopian Orthodox have in the past also included I & II Clement and Shepherd of Hermas in their New Testament canon.
Bahira (, ) was an ArabAl-Masudi, "Muruj adh-Dhahab wa Ma'adin al-Jawhar" ,وقال المسعودي، ت : 345 هـ إن بحيرا الراهب على دين المسيح عيسى بن مريم، واسم بحيرا في النصارى سرجس، وكان من عبد القيس. Nestorian or possibly Gnostic NasoreanJohn of Damascus, Des hérésies, chap. CI. monk who, according to Islamic tradition, foretold to the adolescent Muhammad his future as a prophet.Abel, A. "Baḥīrā".
Valentinus (100-160) promoted a doctrine similar to serpent seed which states that Eve mated with the serpent (who was the embodiment of an Aeon named Sophia), but produced no offspring. This doctrine was rejected by mainstream Christian theologians such as Irenaeus. The idea that Eve mated with the serpent, or Satan, and produced Cain, finds its earliest expression in Gnostic writings (e.g., the Gospel of Philip).
Unofficial estimates indicated an Assyrian Christian population of approximately 10,000. There also were Protestant denominations, including evangelical churches. The Mandaean Sabaeans, a community whose religion draws on pre-Christian gnostic beliefs, numbered approximately 5,000 to 10,000 persons, with members residing primarily in Khuzestan in the southwest. As of 2006, there were indications that members of all religious minorities are emigrating at a higher rate than previously.
The late leader of the Christian apologetic Danish organization Dialogcenteret, dr. theol. Johannes Aagaard, has criticized Jes Bertelsen for mixing Christian and Eastern traditions, and has classified him as "one of the most influential writers and ideologists among the new religious groupings in Denmark" and later as "gnostic".Den Nye Dialog nr. 25: Kærlighed uden kærlighed (title translated: Love without love) and Den Nye Dialog nr.
58534 Logos, or as a binary system (58534) Logos-Zoe, is a trans-Neptunian object and binary system from the classical Kuiper belt, approximately . The bright cubewano belonged to the cold population and has a 66-kilometer sized companion named Zoe. The system mass is . In the Gnostic tradition, Logos and Zoe are a paired emanation of the deity, and part of its creation myth.
Some early Christian Gnostic sects, believing Jesus did not have a physical substance, denied that he was crucified. In response, Ignatius of Antioch insisted that Jesus was truly born and was truly crucified and wrote that those who held that Jesus only seemed to suffer only seemed to be Christians.William Barclay, Great Themes of the New Testament. Westminster John Knox Press. 2001. . p. 41.
25) speaks of the eighth sphere as lying nearest to noeto kosmo. Accordingly, those Gnostic systems which are tinctured by Grecian philosophy, while leaving untouched the doctrine of seven or eight material heavens, develop in various ways the theory of the region above them. In the system of Basilides, as reported by Hippolytus (vii. 20 sqq.), Ogdoad and Hebdomad are merely names of place.
The Priscillianists taught a Gnostic-Manichaean doctrine of dualism, a belief in the existence of two kingdoms, one of Light and one of Darkness. Angels and the souls of men were said to be severed from the substance of the Deity. Human souls were intended to conquer the Kingdom of Darkness, but fell and were imprisoned in material bodies. Thus both kingdoms were represented in man.
Pope revamps ecclesiastical universities in new apostolic constitution, Catholic News Agency. Retrieved 29 January 2018. A further Apostolic Exhortation, Gaudete et exsultate (Rejoice and be glad), was published on 19 March 2018, dealing with "the call to holiness in today's world" for all persons. He counters contemporary versions of the gnostic and Pelagian heresies and describes how Jesus' beatitudes call people to "go against the flow".
They are more likely connected with the Gnostic concept of Archons which were powerful agents of the Demiurge who often wore animal masks and/or came in the form of animals. The fact that the Testaments often wear masks as well as the fact that their E.S. craft all resemble different animals (as opposed to every other E.S. having a more human like appearance) supports this.
The assertion that the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in 1947 (not the 1950s as Brown predicates), contain lost or hidden Gospels is also false. The scrolls contain books of the Hebrew Scriptures, apocryphal and pseudepigraphic books, and manuals used by the Jewish community at Qumran. No definite Christian documents—orthodox, Gnostic, or otherwise—have ever been found at this site, with the possible exception of 7Q5.
The Dialogue of the Saviour is one of the New Testament apocrypha texts that was found within the Nag Hammadi library of predominantly Gnostic texts. The text appears only once in a single Coptic codex, and is heavily damaged. The surviving portions indicate that the general content is a dialogue with Jesus, in a similar manner to, and possibly based on, the Gospel of Thomas.
Her fourth marriage took place on February 14, 2009, to Michael Ulery, the owner of a jewelry store.Neville, Anne. "Psychic Sylvia Browne sees better days ahead.", Buffalo News, 2009-03-26 In March 2011, the Society of Novus Spiritus, the Gnostic Christian Church founded by Browne, announced that she had suffered a heart attack on March 21 in Hawaii, requesting donations on her behalf.
According to Gnosticism scholar Pagels, "Qumran fever" that was raised by the discovery of the Scrolls is gradually dying down, with theories of Gnostic influences in the Johannine works beginning to be proposed again, especially in Germany. Some recent views have seen the theology of Johannine works as directly opposing "Thomas Christians".Riley, Gregory J., 1995. Resurrection Reconsidered: Thomas and John in Controversy. Minneapolis.
The basis of Aun Weor's Practical Work is of a psychological nature. He states in many of his books that the purpose of his doctrine is to affect a psychological change. The terms Gnostic, Esoteric or Revolutionary Psychology are used to describe the psychological methods taught, and are said to be synonymous with the psychological teachings of religion.Andre Dawson New Era, New Religions, p.
The Egerton Gospel has been largely ignored outside a small circle of scholars. The work cannot be dismissed as "apocrypha" or "heretical" without compromising the orthodoxy of the Gospel of John. Nor can it be classed as "gnostic" and dismissed as marginal. It seems to be almost independent of the synoptic gospels and to represent a tradition similar to the canonical John, but independent of it.
Muhammad Sadiq wrote for many purposes and was famous for ghazal, nationalism, lamentation and divinities. In his youth, he loved a girl but did not last long because the girl died and this effect affected by her youth poetry. He wrote in Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish, and Persian and combined this languages in his "Mal'amah" poem. He wrote a large number of Gnostic ruba'iyat known as "Khuwairat".
With this in mind, the Masonic system provides an adequate structure for this course taken using occultist methods. The teachings address essentially major themes relating to the Judeo-Christian tradition, but from an esoteric point of view, under the Cabbalistic and Valentinian-gnostic influences found in Pasqually’s own texts, rituals and catechisms. They drew upon the power of Church prayers, banished the influence of Satan from humanity.
The narrative recounts that Jesus sent out a group of followers to spread his message. The followers were Philip, Bartholomew, and a woman named Mariamne, who is identified in the text as Philip's sister, and is a leading figure in the second half of the text. They form a community that seemes to practice vegetarianism and celibacy, and uses a form of the eucharist where vegetables and water were consumed in place of bread and wine.Women Priests, Vegetarianism - An Early Christian Manuscript Holds Some Surprises Mariamne wears men's clothes and holds positions of authority comparable to men, serving as a priest and a deacon. Due to this, the Acts have been proposed to be an Encratite text with Gnostic influences,Zlatko Pleše, Poetics of the Gnostic Universe: Narrative and Cosmology in the Apocryphon of John, 2006, Brill with Mariamne's clothings reaffirming her resistance against the snake of Eden's seduction of Eve.
In the 100 Chapters, Diadochos shows himself as a bishop worried about the orthodoxy of his flock and as a clear actor in the spiritual fights of his time. Also, Chapters 13 and 91 of his work show readers a real Christian man of prayer, united to God, discovering the "life in Christ" and wanting to share its goodness with his readers. Sometimes, this work has been referred to as the Gnostic Chapters; however, this can be misleading, as "Gnostic" in this case refers to theoria (the knowledge of God), relating to its Biblical usage, and not to the early Christian sects of Gnosticism, which are considered heretical by Orthodox Christians. Quote from Chapters 11 & 12: > Spiritual discourse always keeps the soul free from self-esteem, for it > gives every part of the soul a sense of light, so that it no longer needs > the praise of men.
Aleister Crowley wrote The Gnostic Mass — technically called Liber XV or "Book 15" — in 1913 while travelling in Moscow, Russia. The structure is similar to the Mass of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church, communicating the principles of Crowley's Thelema. It is the central rite of Ordo Templi Orientis and its ecclesiastical arm, Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica. The ceremony calls for five officers: a Priest, a Priestess, a Deacon, and two acolytes, called Children (though current practice is that the part is usually performed by adults). The end of the ritual culminates in the consummation of the eucharist, consisting of a goblet of wine and a Cake of Light, after which the congregant proclaims “There is no part of me that is not of the gods!” Crowley explains why he wrote the Gnostic Mass in his Confessions: > While dealing with this subject I may as well outline its scope completely.
At least two modern conferences within Hellenic philosophy fields of study have been held in order to address what Plotinus stated in his tract Against the Gnostics and to whom he was addressing it, in order to separate and clarify the events and persons involved in the origin of the term "Gnostic". From the dialogue, it appears that the word had an origin in the Platonic and Hellenistic tradition long before the group calling themselves "Gnostics"—or the group covered under the modern term "Gnosticism"—ever appeared. It would seem that this shift from Platonic to Gnostic usage has led many people to confusion. The strategy of sectarians taking Greek terms from philosophical contexts and re-applying them to religious contexts was popular in Christianity, the Cult of Isis and other ancient religious contexts including Hermetic ones (see Alexander of Abonutichus for an example).
Origen, "Commentary on Romans", 5.8.3. Anointing was particularly important among the Gnostics. Many early apocryphal and Gnostic texts state that John the Baptist's baptism by water was incomplete and that anointment with oil is a necessary part of the baptismal process. The Gospel of Philip claims that > chrism is superior to baptism, for it is from the word "chrism" that we have > been called "Christians", certainly not from the word "baptism".
Irenaeus sought to present "what was understood as an authentic form of century-old Christian tradition against various forms of Gnosticism." As bishop, Irenaeus felt compelled to keep a close eye on the Valentinians and to safeguard the church from them. In order to fulfill this duty, Irenaeus became well informed of Gnostic doctrines and traditions. His studies of Gnosticism eventually led to the compilation of this treatise.
Epiphanius also says that they believed that Eve was wise to have eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. If this last report is accurate, it suggests that later Quintillians had adopted certain Gnostic teachings. For Epiphanius, the Quintillianists are synonymous with the Priscillianists, Phrygians and Pepuzians and a sister sect of the Artotyrites and Tascodrugites. Augustine of Hippo and John of Damascus also mention Quintillians among the Montanist sects.
The Cathars being expelled from Carcassonne in 1209. The Cathars were denounced as heretics by the Roman Catholic Church for their dualist beliefs. The dualism between God and Creation has existed as a central belief in multiple historical sects and traditions of Christianity, including Marcionism, Catharism, Paulicianism, and other forms of Gnostic Christianity. Christian dualism refers to the belief that God and creation are distinct, but interrelated through an indivisible bond.
In many Gnostic systems, God is known as the Monad, the One. God is the high source of the pleroma, the region of light. The various emanations of God are called æons. According to Hippolytus, this view was inspired by the Pythagoreans, who called the first thing that came into existence the Monad, which begat the dyad, which begat the numbers, which begat the point, begetting lines, etc.
Iraqi minority group needs U.S. attention , Kai Thaler, Yale Daily News, March 9, 2007. The name of the group derives from the term Mandā d-Heyyi, which roughly means "Knowledge of Life". John the Baptist is a key figure in the religion, as an emphasis on baptism is part of their core beliefs. They are thought to be originally from Judea/Palestine and their anthropogeny appears Jewish and Gnostic.
Winston E. Waugh Sufism Xulon Press 2005 p. 17Tilman Nagel Geschichte der islamischen Theologie: von Mohammed bis zur Gegenwart C.H. Beck 1994 p. 222 However, according to Islam and unlike most Gnostic sects, not rejection of this world, but performing good deeds leads to the heaven. And according to the Islamic belief in strict Oneness of God, there was no room for a lower deity; such as the demiurge.
Mandaeism or Mandaeanism (, '), also known as Sabaeanism (, '), is a monotheistic and gnostic religion with a strongly dualistic cosmology. Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enos, Noah, Shem, Aram, and especially John the Baptist. The Mandaeans have been counted among the Semites and speak a dialect of Eastern Aramaic known as Mandaic. The name 'Mandaean' is said to come from the Aramaic manda meaning "knowledge", as does Greek gnosis.
The Acts of Peter and the Twelve is one of the texts from the New Testament apocrypha which was found in the Nag Hammadi library. The text contains two parts, an initial allegory, and a subsequent gnostic exposition of its meaning. The allegory is thought to have been originally a work in its own right. The text is dated to the 2nd or 3rd century and is attested Greek and Coptic.
Christian Gnostic traditions suggest that Simon of Cyrene as the man who was crucified, instead of Jesus, a concept deemed heretical. Unlike Christianity, "divine doubles" are accepted in Hindu and Greek tales.Doniger (1999) p. 14 In some retellings of the Trojan War saga, a phantom Helen of Troy is kidnapped by Paris which brings upon the great war; a story parallel to the story of abduction of Maya Sita by Ravana.
Since babies have no "will" to desire their baptisms, Augustine expanded the implication to all humans. and He concluded that God must predestine all humans prior to them making any choice. Although earlier Christians taught original sin, the concept of total depravity (total inability to believe on Christ) was borrowed from Gnostic Manichaeism. Manichaeism taught unborn babies and unbaptized infants were damned to hell because of a physical body.
Apelles was a second-century Gnostic Christian thinker. He started out his ministry as a disciple of Marcion of Sinope, probably in Rome. But at some point, Apelles either left, or was expelled from, the Marcionite church. Tertullian writes that this was because he had become intimate with a woman named Philumena who claimed to be possessed by an angel, who gave her 'revelations' which Apelles read out in public.
He does indeed use the Hebrew words Naas and Caulacau, but these words had already passed into the common Gnostic vocabulary so as to become known to many unacquainted with Hebrew. He shows a great knowledge of the religious mysteries of various nations. For instance, he dilates much on the Phrygian rites, and the whole section seems to be a commentary on a hymn to the Phrygian Attis.
Retrieved on 30 October 2006 In September 1921 Theodor Reuss issued fringe masonic charters to Hansen for Gnostic Primas, Memphis & Misraim, Ordo Templi Orientis and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light.Lomholt, Sigurd: Vinkelfrimureriet : irregulære og bedrageriske Frimurer-Riter samt det danske Vinkelfrimureri's Historie i Nutiden. Copenhagen 1931. In 1923 he engaged in the founding of a Martinist lodge in Denmark, later dissolved and rebuilt as the lodge The Three Columns.
"ahuric" and "daivic" words for developed for such things as body parts. For example, the word zasta and gava became used for the hands of a righteous and evil person, respectively. This was however not a gnostic system like the ones that flourished in the Middle East in the Common Era. This was because there was no myth of evil being created through the corruption of a spiritual being.
160), who founded a Gnostic church in Rome and developed an elaborate cosmology. Gnostics considered the material world to be a prison created by a fallen or evil spirit, the god of the material world (called the demiurge). Gnostics identified the God of the Hebrew Bible as this demiurge. Secret knowledge (gnosis) was said to liberate one's soul to return to the true God in the realm of light.
When first starting out, Powell and Thorgerson adopted their name from graffiti they found on the door to their apartment. Thorgerson said they liked the word, not only for punning on "hypnosis," but for possessing "a nice sense of contradiction, of an impossible co-existence, from Hip = new, cool, and groovy, and Gnostic, relating to ancient learning."Thorgerson, S: Hipgnosis • Walk Away René, page 87. Paper Tiger, 1978.
Queen Jasmina of the lighthugger Gnostic Ascension wakes Quaiche, a member of her crew, from Reefersleep. She is disappointed with him; despite his promises that he would improve the crew's fortunes, he has not done so. In fact, many of the systems he has explored were filled with extremely valuable artifacts which he failed to detect and were picked up by other ships. As such, she gives him one last chance.
Lycopolitan (also known as Subakhmimic and Assiutic) is a dialect closely related to Akhmimic in terms of when and where it was attested, but manuscripts written in Lycopolitan tend to be from the area of Asyut. The main differences between the two dialects seem to be graphic in nature. The Lycopolitan variety was used extensively for translations of Gnostic and Manichaean works, including the texts of the Nag Hammadi library.
There are four main pieces of furniture in a Gnostic Mass temple: The High Altar: the dimensions are long by wide by high. It is covered with a crimson cloth. It is situated in the East, or in the direction of Boleskine House—Crowley's former estate—on the shores of Loch Ness in Scotland ("Temple East"). The two-tiered super-altar sits on top of the High Altar.
Section B also contains most of the docetic themes present in the Acts of John. Jesus is depicted in several chapters as having a constantly shifting form and an immaterial body. A docetic theme of Jesus' body as inhuman and unable to feel physical pain presents a problem with the idea of the suffering of Christ in orthodox Christianity. Ideas about the nature of Jesus vary widely within different gnostic sects.
This is also the mark that > was set on Cain, whose sacrifice the god of this world [the creator god] did > not accept whereas he accepted the bloody sacrifice of Abel: for the lord of > this world delights in blood.The Gnostic Religion, by Hans Jonas, 1958, p. > 95. Sloane believed in a horned god, which he said was revealed to him in the woods when he was a child.
It is also often, albeit not exclusively, used in this way by Bábists, Baháʼís, Mandaeans, Indonesian and Maltese Christians, and Mizrahi Jews.Columbia Encyclopedia, Allah "Allah." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa, AllahWillis Barnstone, Marvin Meyer The Gnostic Bible: Revised and Expanded Edition Shambhala Publications 2009 page 531 Similar usage by Christians and Sikhs in West Malaysia has recently led to political and legal controversies.
Thelema is the English transliteration of the ancient Greek noun θέλημα: "will", from the verb ἐθέλω: to will, wish, purpose. While many contemporary movements associate this term exclusively with Aleister Crowley, the use of the term Thelema is actually derived from the Lord's Prayer (Pater Noster): "Thy will (Θελημα) be done, on earth as it is in heaven." (Matthew 6:10). "Thelema" is the motto of the Gnostic Movement.
Miller identifies as gnostic and believes that the universe is an illusion created by a powerful force, that "is not conscious of the fact that it’s not God itself". Politically, he is an anarchist, however does not believe that any one personal has the right to impose their politics onto another. He has a son named Richard, to a woman he had a relationship with in the '80s.
The word apocryphal () was first applied to writings which were kept secret because they were the vehicles of esoteric knowledge considered too profound or too sacred to be disclosed to anyone other than the initiated. For example, the disciples of the Gnostic Prodicus boasted that they possessed the secret () books of Zoroaster. The term in general enjoyed high consideration among the Gnostics (see Acts of Thomas, pp. 10, 27, 44).
Hiwi is viewed by some scholars as an intellectually conflicted man torn between Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Gnostic Christianity, and Manichaean thought."The Messiah in Isaiah 53: The Commentaries of Sa'adya Gaon, Salmon Ben Yeruham, and Yefet Ben Eli 52:13-53:12", Trade paperback (1998) by Sa'adia, Joseph AlobaidiRosenthal, J. "Hiwi Al-Balkhi: A Comparative Study." Jewish Quarterly Review 38; 39 (1947-48; 1948-49): 317-42, 419-30; 79-94.
Iranian Mandaeans live mainly in the Khuzestan Province in southern Iran.صابئین ایران‌زمین، عکس: عباس تحویلدار، متن: مسعود فروزنده، آلن برونه، تهران: نشر کلید: ۱۳۷۹، شابک: 9789649064550، ص۸ Mandeans are a Mandaic speaking Semitic people who follow their own distinctive Gnostic religion Mandaeism, venerating John the Baptist as the true Messiah. Like the Assyrians of Iran, their origins lie in ancient Mesopotamia. They number some 10,000 people in Iran,Contrera, Russell.
Miraculous catch of fish, by Aelbrecht Bouts Two sayings are attributed to Peter in the gnostic Gospel of Thomas. In the first, Peter compares Jesus to a "just messenger". In the second, Peter asks Jesus to "make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life." In the Apocalypse of Peter, Peter holds a dialogue with Jesus about the parable of the fig tree and the fate of sinners.
IAO (subtitled Music in Sacred Light) is an album by John Zorn released in 2002 on the Tzadik label.Tzadik catalogue The album was inspired by Aleister Crowley and his follower, filmmaker Kenneth Anger and draws its title from the Kabbalistic identity of IAO, the initials of Isis, Apophis and Osiris, used as a magical formula in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and in Aleister Crowley's Gnostic Mass.
The significance of "Gnostic Serenade" was recognized on Dancing Alone through the inclusion of two versions, one by Titcomb and another by Stevenson. In 2010, Ottawa-based Apt. 9 Press published Sweet & Sour Nothings, Hawkins' sixth collection of poems. This was the first publication of the poems as a separate book; they had previously been included in a 1980 anthology edited by Patrick White, poet and founder of Anthos Press.
This imagery is found in the fourth-century theologians Aphrahat and Ephrem the Syrian. It is found in earlier writings of Syriac Christianity such as the Odes of SolomonSusan Ashbrook Harvey, "Feminine Imagery for the Divine: The Holy Spirit, the Odes of Solomon, and Early Syriac Tradition," St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 37, nos. 2-3 (1993): 111-120. and in the Gnostic early-third-century Acts of Thomas.
The ogdoad described by Gnostic Valentinus in the 2nd century AD (with the first two named Propator and Ennoia) In the system of Valentinus again the names Ogdoad and Hebdomad occur in the same signification. Above this lower world are the seven heavens, where dwells their maker the Demiurge himself also, on that account, called Hebdomas (Iren. I. v. p. 24). Of these seven heavens Marcus taught in more detail (Iren.
Mural painting from the catacomb of Commodilla. One of the first bearded images of Jesus, late 4th century. There is only one description of the physical appearance of Jesus given in the New Testament, and the depiction of Jesus in pictorial form was controversial in the early Church.Philip Schaff commenting on Irenaeus, wrote, 'This censure of images as a Gnostic peculiarity, and as a heathenish corruption, should be noted'.
A Christian who was concerned to emphasize that people would be physically resurrected, rather than merely spiritually, forged 3 Corinthians to counter Gnostic teachings. The Acts of Paul also appear to be familiar with the traditional account about the martyrdom of Peter, in which, having been arrested and condemned to death, Peter asked to be crucified head-down because he wasn't worthy of having the same death as Jesus.
Robert H. Stein, An Introduction to the Parables of Jesus, Westminster John Knox Press, 1981, , pp. 82-91. In Luke, the invitation is extended particularly to the "poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame" (), evidencing explicit concern for the "poor and the outcasts." A variant of the parable also appears in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas (Saying 64).Gospel of Thomas: Lamb translation and Patterson/Meyer translation.
According to Louis Ginzberg "it is almost impossible to derive from rabbinical sources a clear picture of his personality, and modern historians have differed greatly in their estimate of him. According to Grätz, he was a Karpotian Gnostic; according to Siegfried, a follower of Philo; according to Dubsch, a Christian; according to Smolenskin and Weiss, a victim of the inquisitor Akiva."Louis Ginzberg, "Elisha ben Abuyah", Jewish Encyclopedia, 1901-1906.
Johann Wilhelm Ebel (1784–1861) was a German Lutheran clergyman and teacher. Ebel was born in Passenheim (Pasym), East Prussia, becoming a pastor in Königsberg. He was one of the founders of the Mucker Society, a group with pronounced similarities to earlier Gnostic groups. Ebel and the society were tried on a variety of charges relating to morality, all of which were dismissed after a six-year trial.
Catharism was a self- described Christian movement which incorporated Gnostic and dualistic ideas into its interpretation of Scripture. The terms Cathar, Catharism and even Perfecti and Credentes were ones used by their persecuters, the religious and temporal authorities of the time. The Cathars themselves never referred to themselves as such, calling themselves only "Bons Hommes", "Bonnes Femmes" or "Bons Chrétiens" (i.e. "Good Men", "Good Women" and "Good Christians").
She sees that his spirit is finally at peace. Alice is not the only human to experience a theophany related to Lufteufel's passing. Another survivor has a vision of a "Palm Tree Garden" equivalent to the Garden of Eden. This implies that Lufteufel may have been a gnostic demiurge, an evil earthbound deity who believes itself omnipotent, but whose abilities are constricted compared to "higher levels" of divinity.
Chapter four details Greenwood's early involvement in Wicca, through three separate covens. Offering her thoughts on Wiccan invocations, she then discusses the faith's approach to sexual polarity, pointing to the sexual underpinnings of the Great Rite and the Gnostic Mass as evidence. The chapter is rounded off with an explanation of how Wicca understands the natural world and a comparison between the religion and ceremonial magic.Greenwood 2000. pp. 83-115.
In the early 3rd century, Sethianism was fully rejected by Christian heresiologists, and Sethianism shifted toward the contemplative practices of Platonism, while losing their interest in their own origins. Phase 6. In the late 3rd century, Sethianism was attacked by neo- Platonists like Plotinus, and Sethianism alienated from Platonism. In the early to mid-4th century, Sethianism fragmented into various sectarian Gnostic groups, like the Archontics, Audians, Borborites, and Phibionites.
Dositheos (occasionally also known as Nathanael,William Benjamin Smith, "The Meaning of the Epithet Nazorean", Monist XV:27, 1904. both meaning "gift of God") was a Samaritan religious leader, founder of a Samaritan sect often assumed to be gnostic in nature. He is reputed to have known John the Baptist, and been either a teacher or a rival of Simon Magus."The Dead Sea Scrolls and Prmitive Christianity", Jean Danielou, p.
Reincarnation was accepted by most Gnostic Christian sects such as Valentinianism and the Basilidians, but denied by the proto- orthodox one. While hypothetically considering a complex multiple-world transmigration scheme in De Principiis, Origen denies reincarnation in unmistakable terms in his work Against Celsus and elsewhere.Catholic Answers, Quotes by Church Fathers Against Reincarnation , 2004.John S. Uebersax, Early Christianity and Reincarnation: Modern Misrepresentation of Quotes by Origen, 2006.
Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215) generally uses the term apokatastasis to refer to the "restoration" of the "gnostic" Christians, rather than that of the universe or of all Christians, but with universal implications. As indicated above, the position of Origen (186–284) is disputed, with works as recent as the New Westminster Dictionary of Church History presenting him as teaching that the apocatastasis would involve universal salvation.
While many scholars accept the traditional dating of Ignatius' martyrdom under Trajan, others have argued for a somewhat later date. Richard Pervo dated Ignatius' death to 135-140 AD. British classicist Timothy Barnes has argued for a date in the 140s AD, on the grounds that Ignatius seems to have quoted a work of the Gnostic Ptolemy in one of his epistles, who only became active in the 130s.
Some religious scholars have argued the findings at Nag Hammadi have shown Irenaeus' description of Gnosticism to be inaccurate and polemic in nature.Pagels, Elaine. Beyond Belief, Pan Books, 2005. p. 54 However, the general consensus among modern scholars is that Irenaeus was fairly accurate in his transmission of Gnostic beliefs, and that the Nag Hammadi texts have raised no substantial challenges to the overall accuracy of Irenaeus' information.
Although it is still debated as to whether Hermetism was a purely literary phenomenon, or whether there were communities of practitioners who acted on these ideas, it has been established that these texts discuss the true nature of God, emphasising that humans must transcend rational thought and worldly desires in order to find salvation and be reborn into a spiritual body of immaterial light, thereby achieving spiritual unity with divinity. Another tradition of esoteric thought in Late Antiquity was Gnosticism, which had a complex relationship with Christianity. Various Gnostic sects existed, and they broadly believed that the divine light had been imprisoned within the material world by a malevolent entity known as the Demiurge, who was served by demonic helpers, the Archons. It was the Gnostic belief that humans, who were imbued with the divine light, should seek to attain gnosis and thus escape from the world of matter and rejoin the divine source.
A Sibyl, by Domenichino (c. 1616-17) The Sibylline Oracles (; sometimes called the pseudo-Sibylline Oracles) are a collection of oracular utterances written in Greek hexameters ascribed to the Sibyls, prophets who uttered divine revelations in a frenzied state. Fourteen books and eight fragments of Sibylline Oracles survive, in an edition of the 6th or 7th century AD. They are not to be confused with the original Sibylline Books of the ancient Etruscans and Romans which were burned by order of Roman general Flavius Stilicho in the 4th century AD. Instead, the text is an "odd pastiche" of Hellenistic and Roman mythology interspersed with Jewish, Gnostic and early Christian legend. The content of the individual books is probably of different age, dated to anywhere between the 1st and 7th centuries AD. The Sibylline Oracles are a valuable source for information about classical mythology and early first millennium Gnostic, Hellenistic Jewish and Christian beliefs.
Along with Sayyid Husayn Badkuba'i, he was a student of two of the most famous masters of the time, Sayyid Abu'l-Hasan Jilwah and Aqa 'Ali Mudarris Zunuzi. In his later years he would often hold study sessions with Henry Corbin and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, in which not only the classical texts of divine wisdom and gnosis were discussed, but also a whole cycle of what Nasr calls comparative gnosis, in which in each session the sacred texts of one of the major religions, containing mystical and gnostic teachings, such as the Upanishads, Tao Te Ching, the Gospel of John, were discussed and compared with Sufism and Islamic gnostic doctrines in general. Tabataba'i, was a philosopher, a prolific writer, and an inspiring teacher to his students who devoted much of his life to Islamic studies. Many of his students were among the ideological founders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, namely Morteza Motahhari, Muhammad Beheshti, and Mohammad Mofatteh.
The main contents concern the Sethian Gnostic understanding of how the earth came into being, how Seth, in the Gnostic interpretation, is incarnated as Jesus in order to release people's souls from the evil prison that is creation. More specifically, the text can be divided into four parts concerning the creation of the heavenly world: the creation of the heavenly world, the creation and significance of the race of Seth, a hymn, and the history behind the creation of the text itself It also contains a hymn, parts of which are unusual in being apparently meaningless sequences of vowels (thought to be a representation of early Christian glossolalia), although the vowels of the final paragraph (u aei eis aei ei o ei ei os ei) can be partitioned to read (in Greek) who exists as Son for ever and ever. You are what you are, you are who you are. One explanation could be that these vowels are connected to the divine name YHWH.
In 1911 Henry Wace stated: A primary difference between Marcionites and Gnostics was that the Gnostics based their theology on secret wisdom (as, for example, Valentinius who claimed to receive the secret wisdom from Theudas who received it direct from Paul) of which they claimed to be in possession, whereas Marcion based his theology on the contents of the Letters of Paul and the recorded sayings of Jesus -- in other words, an argument from scripture, with Marcion defining what was and was not scripture. Also, the Christology of the Marcionites is thought to have been primarily Docetic, denying the human nature of Christ. This may have been due to the unwillingness of Marcionites to believe that Jesus was the son of both God the Father and the demiurge. Scholars of Early Christianity disagree on whether to classify Marcion as a Gnostic: Adolf von Harnack does not classify Marcion as a Gnostic,Article on Adolf von Harnack whereas G. R. S. Mead does.
The Greek Gospel of the Egyptians (which is quite distinct from the later, wholly Gnostic Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians), perhaps written in the second quarter of the 2nd century, was already cited in Clement of Alexandria's miscellany, the Stromata, where quotations give us many of the brief excerpts that are all that remain; it was also mentioned by Hippolytus, who alludes to "these various changes of the soul, set forth in the Gospel entitled according to the Egyptians" and connects the Gospel of the Egyptians with the Gnostic Naassene sect. Later, that 4th-century collector of heresies, Epiphanius of Salamis, asserts that the Sabellians made use of this gospel; though it is unlikely that he had any firsthand information about Sabellius, who taught in the early 3rd century. The euphemism, the Word logos, as an appellation of the Saviour, which appears in the gospel, betokens the influence of the Gospel of John, thus suggesting a date ca. 120 - 150\.
Like Zostrianos, and Allogenes, the text describes a very elaborate esoteric cosmogony of successive emanations from an original God, as revealed by Marsanes, who is recognized as a Gnostic prophet. Within the text there are indications that the Sethians had developed ideas of monism, an idea comparable to Heracleon's notion of universal perfection and permanence as expressed through the constancy of the total mass of things within it (that is, all matter in the universe may only change form, and may not be created or destroyed), and the later Stoic insistence of nothing existing beyond the material. The text also is an apocalypse that may at one point have been used by the school of Plotinus in Rome. Common Gnostic thought is especially prominent through the text's discussion on the power of sacred knowledge, which can allow readers to ascend through the levels of the universe until they reach the highest heaven where God resides.
Through an ongoing process that takes place in human history, light is gradually removed from the world of matter and returned to the world of light, whence it came. Its beliefs were based on local Mesopotamian religious movements and Gnosticism.Widengren, Geo Mesopotamian elements in Manichaeism (King and Saviour II): Studies in Manichaean, Mandaean, and Syrian-gnostic religion, Lundequistska bokhandeln, 1946. It revered Mani as the final prophet after Zoroaster, Gautama Buddha, and Jesus.
It does not form part of any biblical canon. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is thought to be Gnostic in origin. Later references (by Hippolytus of Rome and Origen of Alexandria) to a "Gospel of Thomas" are not at all referring to this Infancy Gospel, as many modern scholars have thought, but rather to the wholly different Gospel of Thomas. Proto-orthodox Christians regarded the Infancy Gospel of Thomas as inauthentic and heretical.
Bricaud received consecration in the Villate line of apostolic succession in 1919. The original church body founded by Doinel continued under the name Église Gnostique de France (Gnostic Church of France) until it was disbanded in favor of the EGU in 1926. The EGU continued until 1960 when it was disbanded by Robert Amberlain (Tau Jean III) in favor of the Église Gnostique Apostolique that he had founded in 1958.Pearson, J. (2007) p.
Carl Gustav Jung evinced a special interest in Gnosticism from at least 1912, when he wrote enthusiastically about the topic in a letter to Freud. After what he called his own 'encounter with the unconscious,' Jung sought for external evidence of this kind of experience. He found such evidence in Gnosticism, and also in alchemy, which he saw as a continuation of Gnostic thought, and of which more source material was available.Segal (1995) p.
Qanaadasa, a community in the Sahara, and Muhammad al-Qundusi's birthplace. al-Qundusi was born in Qanaadasa, a community in the desert of the Maghreb, and now within the borders of Algeria. In 1828, he migrated to Fes, where he lived and had a hanout in the herb market, in which he sold herbs. He lived in relative obscurity, though those who knew him described him as gnostic, saintly, esoterically knowledgable, and spiritually insightful.
Martianus Capella, De Nuptiis 7; Chance, Medieval Mythography, p. 271. The tale thus lent itself to adaptation in a Christian or mystical context. In the Gnostic text On the Origin of the World, the first rose is created from the blood of Psyche when she loses her virginity to Cupid.Patricia Cox Miller, "'The Little Blue Flower Is Red': Relics and the Poeticizing of the Body," Journal of Early Christian Studies 8.2 (2000), p. 229.
Umm al-Kitab, or The Archetype of the Book, is in the form of a discussion between the imam and three companions. Resembling the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, it illustrates the similarity between imamology and gnostic Christology. A major concept of this work is the description of the numinous experience. Its central motif is the psychological and philosophical explanation of spiritual symbols, with believers instructed to perform acts of self-purification and renewal.
The Gnostic belief was widespread within Christianity until the proto-orthodox Christian communities expelled the group in the second and third centuries (AD). Gnosticism became the first group to be declared heretical. Some scholars prefer to speak of "gnosis" when referring to first- century ideas that later developed into Gnosticism, and to reserve the term "Gnosticism" for the synthesis of these ideas into a coherent movement in the second century.Wilson, R. McL.
According to Walter Bauer, "heresies" may well have been the original form of Christianity in many regions. This theme was further developed by Elaine Pagels, who argues that "the proto-orthodox church found itself in debates with gnostic Christians that helped them to stabilize their own beliefs." According to Gilles Quispel, Catholicism arose in response to Gnosticism, establishing safeguards in the form of the monarchic episcopate, the creed, and the canon of holy books.
Syrian-Egyptian Gnosticism includes Sethianism, Valentinianism, Basilideans, Thomasine traditions, and Serpent Gnostics, as well as a number of other minor groups and writers. Hermeticism is also a western Gnostic tradition, though it differs in some respects from these other groups. The Syrian–Egyptian school derives much of its outlook from Platonist influences. It depicts creation in a series of emanations from a primal monadic source, finally resulting in the creation of the material universe.
The Persian Schools, which appeared in the western Persian province of Babylonia (in particular, within the Sassanid province of Asuristan), and whose writings were originally produced in the Aramaic dialects spoken in Babylonia at the time, are representative of what is believed to be among the oldest of the Gnostic thought forms. These movements are considered by most to be religions in their own right, and are not emanations from Christianity or Judaism.
This Aqa Syed Ali Kashmiri was also the maternal grand father of great Gnostic and jurist, Ayatollah Syed Murtazha Rizvi Kashmiri. A number of great personalities and Islamic jurists were his descendants, who lived in Lucknow, India. Many of them lived and are buried in Karbala and Najaf in Iraq.References: Oe’sh te’ A’ab [Kashmiri Language] (Selection of Kashmiri Marsiyah from period of Sultans to Dogra Rule) November, 2009: Pub: Skyline Publications Pvt. Ltd.
Menander () was a first-century CE Samaritan gnostic and magician. He belonged to the school of the Simonians, becoming its leader after the death of his master and instructor, Simon Magus, who was in Rome during the reign of Emperor Claudius. He is mentioned in the works of Irenaeus, Tertullian and others. Justin Martyr is the oldest source of knowledge about Menander after he met some of the devoted Menandrians in their old age.
Marcus was the founder of the Marcosian Gnostic sect in the 2nd century AD. He was a disciple of Valentinus, with whom his system mainly agrees. His doctrines are almost exclusively known to us through a long polemic (i. 13–21) in Adversus Haereses, in which Irenaeus gives an account of his teaching and his school. Clement of Alexandria clearly knew of Marcus and actually used his number system (Stromata, VI, xvi), though without acknowledgement.
Bastani rituals mimic the practices and traditions of Sufi orders, as evidenced by terminology like murshed or morshed ("master"), pishkesvat ("leader"), tāj ("crown") and faqr ("poverty"). The ethics involved are also similar to Sufi ideals, emphasizing purity of heart. Every session begins with pious praise to the Prophet Muhammed and his family. The morshed dictates the pace by beating a goblet drum (zarb) while reciting Gnostic poems and stories from Persian mythology.
Despite this, the gospel displays no connection with other Jewish–Christian literature, nor does it appear to be based on the Greek rendition of the Gospel of Matthew or the other canonical gospels of what is now orthodox Christianity. Instead, it seems to be taken from alternative oral forms of the same underlying traditions. Some of the fragments suggest a syncretic gnostic influence, while others support close ties to traditional Jewish Wisdom literature.
It is unclear exactly where the substitutionist interpretation originated, but some scholars consider the theory originating among certain Gnostic groups of the second century. Leirvik finds the Quran and Hadith to have been clearly influenced by the non-canonical ('heretical') Christianity that prevailed in the Arab peninsula and further in Abyssinia. Muslim commentators have been unable to convincingly disprove the crucifixion. Rather, the problem has been compounded by adding the conclusion of their substitutionist theories.
Seven years after their second break up, Shaefer decided to re-release and remaster their three albums with different bonus tracks. Relapse Records re-issued the band's three albums in late 2005, as well as a vinyl box set containing the three albums plus the R.A.V.A.G.E. demo "On They Slay". Flynn formed the band Gnostic in the same year. In January 2006, Atheist announced they were regrouping to perform live during the summer and autumn.
In some Gnostic writings Sabaoth is one of the sons of Ialdabaoth. According to Hypostasis of the Archons and On the Origin of the World, Sabaoth dethrones his father Ialdabaoth. In both accounts, Sabaoth repents, when he hears the voice of Sophia, condemns his father and his mother (matter) and afterthat is enthroned by Sophia in the seventh heaven. Some Church Father report on the other hand, that Gnostics identified Sabaoth with Ialdaboath himself.
Each entry names a demon and gives a source in parentheses. ;Sources named Demonology: Ayyavazhi, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, Jewish, Thelemite Eschatology: Christian, Islamic, Jewish eschatology Folklore: Bulgarian, Christian, German, Jewish, Islamic Mythology: Akkadian, Babylonian, Buddhist, Chaldean, Christian, Egyptian, Etruscan, Finnish, Greek, Gnostic, Guanche, Hindu, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Japanese, Mapuche, Moabite, Native American, Persian, Phoenician, Roman, Slavic, Semitic, Sumerian, Zoroastrian Many demons have names with several spellings but few are listed under more than one spelling.
Jonas's writings were very influential in different spheres. For example, The Gnostic Religion, based on his early research on the Gnosis and first published in 1958, was for many years the standard work in English on the subject of Gnosticism. The Imperative of Responsibility (German 1979, English 1984) centers on social and ethical problems created by technology. Jonas insists that human survival depends on our efforts to care for our planet and its future.
In 2005, he was ordained a gnostic priest in the Apostolic Johannite Church, having received a Licentiate of Sacred Theology from St. Raphael the Archangel Theological Seminary. He has written extensively on gnosticism as a modern spiritual practice and on the history of alchemy. He has worked as an advertising creative director, filmmaker, screenwriter, instructor at Vancouver Film School and writer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He cites poet Robin Skelton as an influence.
It also appears in this theory that Adam was the first of the sevenfold series of true prophets, comprising Adam, Seth, Noah, Abraham, Zoroaster, Buddha, and Jesus. The stepping-stone from the Gnostic original man to Manichaeism was probably the older Mandaean conception, which may have exercised great influence. Of this conception, however, there remains in the later Mandaean writings little more than the expression "Gabra Ḳadmaya" (Adam Ḳadmon).Kolasta, i. 11.
A lion-faced deity associated with Gnosticism. Bloom frequently referred to Gnosticism when speaking about general and personal religious matters. After a personal crisis during the late 1960s, Bloom became deeply interested in Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sigmund Freud, and the ancient mystic traditions of Gnosticism, Kabbalah, and Hermeticism. In a 2003 interview with Bloom, Michael Pakenham, the book editor for The Baltimore Sun, posited that Bloom had long referred to himself as a "Jewish Gnostic".
The Spheres are essentially pure Intelligences who receive power from the Prime Mover. This energy overflows from each one to the next and finally reaches earth and the physical domain. This concept of intelligent spheres of existence also appears in Gnostic Christianity as Aeons, having been conceived at least eight hundred years before Maimonides. Maimonides’ immediate source was probably Avicenna, who may in turn have been influenced by the very similar scheme in Isma'ili Islam.
Crowley published the text of the Gnostic Mass three times: in 1918 in a publication called The International, in 1919 in The Equinox (III:1), and in 1929 in Magick in Theory and Practice. It was privately performed while Crowley was at the Abbey of Thelema in Sicily, Italy, and its first public performance was March 19, 1933 by Wilfred T. Smith and Regina Kahl in Hollywood, California at the first Agape Lodge.
File:Abraxas Artistic representationi.jpg The word Abraxas (or Abrasax or Abracax) was engraved on certain antique stones, called Abraxas stones, which were used as amulets or charms by Gnostic sects. The image most associated with Abraxas is that of a composite creature with the head of a rooster, the body of a man, and legs made of serpents or scorpions; carrying a whip and shield. The Gnostics identified Abraxas with Yahweh (under the Greek form "IAO").
In interpreting The Vision of Dorotheus, some authors have argued for a Gnostic influence on Dorotheus' writing. has suggested that the change in clothes that Dorotheus undergoes at the end of the Vision (326–334) forms an allegory "deeply imbued with Gnosticism", drawing parallels with the Hymn of the Pearl where the King's change of clothes symbolises his immortality. notes the use of two obscure epithets for God, "" (translit. panatiktos, meaning indomitable) (11) and "" (translit.
Jerzy Konorski Jerzy Konorski (1 December 1903 in Łódź, Congress Poland – 14 November 1973 in Warsaw, Poland) was a Polish neurophysiologist who further developed the work of Ivan Pavlov by discovering secondary conditioned reflexes and operant conditioning. He also proposed the idea of gnostic neurons, a concept similar to the grandmother cell. He coined the term neural plasticity,Livingston, R.B. (1966) Brain mechanisms in conditioning and learning. Neurosciences Research Program Bulletin 4(3):349-354.
Thelemnar names "nature, darkness, Satan" as main influencesInterview de Secrets of the Moon, accessed on 22 March 2013. and recommends to read Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and Aleister Crowley,Philip A. Wickstrand: Secrets of the Moon's T. Thelemnar, 4 June 2010, accessed on 22 March 2013. whose Gnostic Mass starts the album Carved in Stigmata Wounds. S. Golden also refers to Crowley,Joe: SECRETS OF THE MOON, June 2004, accessed on 22 March 2013.
In the attempts made by the framers of different Gnostic systems to explain the origin of the existing world, the first stage in the process was usually made by personifying the conception in the divine mind of that which was to emanate from Him. We learn from Justin Martyr (Ap. I. 26), and from Irenaeus (I. 23), that the word Ennoea was used in a technical sense in the system of Simon.
Sun Ra's system had distinct Gnostic leanings,Szwed (1998), p. 297. arguing that the god of most monotheistic religions was not the creator god, not the ultimate god, but a lesser, evil being. Sun Ra was wary of the Bible, knowing that it had been used to justify slavery. He often re-arranged and re-worded Biblical passages (and re-worked many other words, names, or phrases) in an attempt to uncover "hidden" meanings.
There is also speculation that the figure is the Gnostic demiurge, Ialdabaoth. Although the exact identity of the lion-headed figure is debated by scholars, it is largely agreed that the god is associated with time and seasonal change. However an occultist, D. Jason Cooper, speculates to the contrary that the lion-headed figure is not a god, but rather represents the spiritual state achieved in Mithraism's "adept" level, the Leo (lion) degree.
In Manichaeism, God and the devil are two unrelated principles. God created good and inhabits the realm of light, while the devil (also called the prince of darkness) created evil and inhabits the kingdom of darkness. The contemporary world came into existence, when the kingdom of darkness assaulted the kingdom of light and mingled with the spiritual world.Willis Barnstone, Marvin Meyer The Gnostic Bible: Revised and Expanded Edition Shambhala Publications 2009 p.
Nicene Christianity (i.e. the views which came to be summarized in the doctrines contained in the Nicene Creed) existed alongside various cults (one of which was labelled 'Gnosticism') for centuries, until the Nicenian interpretation became accepted as "mainstream" Christianity.Pagels & King (2007). Before the discovery of Gnostic texts (such as the Nag Hammadi library), scholars had to rely solely on the reports of proto-Nicene church fathers for their understanding of alternative approaches to understanding Christianity.
These reports were necessarily biased since they were written by people opposed to non-Nicene churches. Furthermore, study and analysis of original non-Nicene texts has shown that the church fathers sometimes oversimplified when writing about their doctrinal opponents. The Gospel of Judas was condemned by Irenaeus in his anti-Gnostic work Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies), written in about 180. Despite this, The Gospel of Judas differs from other non-Nicene Gospels in several ways.
The text is known from three partial manuscripts, and additional fragments, all of which are in Coptic. The text contains visions by Bartholomew, and acts of Thomas, but is predominantly about The Passion, and the Eucharist. The text seems to have no semblance of gnostic interpretations, and instead appears to be a text aiming to fill in the supernatural details of the Passion, and to emphasise the value and meaning of church liturgy.
The letter also contains statements that indicate that the author believed in predestination. One excerpt states, "Therefore, we are elected to salvation and redemption since we are predestined from the beginning not to fall into the foolishness of those who are without knowledge, but we shall enter into the wisdom of those who have known the Truth." This excerpt also emphasizes the importance of knowledge for salvation, which is also a gnostic view.
In January 2006, Tarcher/Penguin published The Essential Nostradamus, Smoley's guide to the enigmatic prophet Michel de Nostradamus. The book contains new translations of Nostradamus's key prophecies, as well as an evaluation of his work and of prophecy in general. A second edition of this work appeared in 2011. In 2006, Harper San Francisco (now Harper One) published Smoley's book Forbidden Faith: The Gnostic Legacy from the Gospels to "The Da Vinci Code".
Crowley believed that several women in his life occupied the office of Scarlet Woman, for which see the list below. Babalon's consort is Chaos, called the "Father of Life" in the Gnostic Mass, being the male form of the Creative Principle. Chaos appears in The Vision and the Voice and later in Liber Cheth vel Vallum Abiegni. Separate from her relationship with her consort, Babalon is usually depicted as riding the Beast.
Just as, in the case of the original Adam, the woman was constructed from man, and their carnal cleaving together was portrayed as becoming one flesh, so the ideal for kabbalists is the reconstitution of what Wolfson calls the male androgyne. Much closer in spirit to some ancient Gnostic dicta, Wolfson understands the eschatological ideal in traditional Kabbalah to have been the female becoming male (see his Circle in the Square and Language, Eros, Being).
He discovers she has been searching for Garrett online, as well as the books she noticed in the photo and Gnostic rituals which state that a wound is a portal for higher beings to enter the world. At work, Will gets more and more erratic and starts a fight with Jeffrey. He receives another text from Carrie, claiming someone is in the house with her. Will rushes home and discovers her in a trance again.
"Classical Syriac" is the term for the literary language as it developed by the 3rd century. The language of the first three centuries of the Christian era is also known as "Old Syriac" (but sometimes subsumed under "Classical Syriac"). The earliest Christian literature in Syriac was biblical translation, the Peshitta and the Diatessaron. Bardaisan was an important non-Christian (Gnostic) author of the 2nd century, but most of his works are lost and only known from later references.
Neurons in the cortex of the temporal lobe and in the amygdala of the monkey with responses selective for faces. Hum Neurobiol 3:209–22. These cells are selective in that they do not fire for other visual objects important for monkeys such as fruit and genitalia. Research finds that some of these cells can be trained to show high specificity for arbitrary visual objects, and these would seem to fit the requirements of gnostic/grandmother cells.
For the monks of Mt. Izla, Evagrius was the pillar of mystical theology. The Greek text was condemned already in 553 for its Origenist heresies. But unlike the Greek, the 'Common Syriac Version', a translation of the Gnostic chapters of Evagrius by the Monophysite Philoxenus, was void of the specific Origenist-Evagrian Christology. For example, it omits the 'nous-Christos' Christology where the God-logos and the flesh are united in the nous, Jesus Christ, the subject of incarnation.
The Cathars (Cathari, Albigenses or Albigensians) were also accused by their enemies of the traits of Gnosticism; though whether or not the Cathari possessed direct historical influence from ancient Gnosticism is disputed. If their critics are reliable the basic conceptions of Gnostic cosmology are to be found in Cathar beliefs (most distinctly in their notion of a lesser, Satanic, creator god), though they did not apparently place any special relevance upon knowledge (gnosis) as an effective salvific force.
Prior to the discovery at Nag Hammadi, a limited number of texts were available to students of Gnosticism. Reconstructions were attempted from the records of the heresiologists, but these were necessarily coloured by the motivation behind the source accounts. The Nag Hammadi library is a collection of Gnostic texts discovered in 1945 near Nag Hammadi, Upper Egypt. Twelve leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by a local farmer named Muhammed al- Samman.
Marvin Meyer and James M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition. HarperOne, 2007. pp. 2–3. The writings in these codices comprised fifty-two mostly Gnostic treatises, but they also include three works belonging to the Corpus Hermeticum and a partial translation/alteration of Plato's Republic. These codices may have belonged to a nearby Pachomian monastery, and buried after Bishop Athanasius condemned the use of non-canonical books in his Festal Letter of 367.
The text of this Gospel is late and pseudepigraphical. However, some academics suggest that it may contain remnants of an earlier, apocryphal work (perhaps Gnostic, Ebionite or Diatessaronic), redacted to bring it more in line with Islamic doctrine. Some Muslims consider the surviving versions as transmitting a suppressed apostolic original in support of the Islamic view of Jesus. This work should not be confused with the surviving Epistle of Barnabas, nor with the surviving Acts of Barnabas.
The Beekeeper is the eighth studio album by singer-songwriter Tori Amos. It deals with the topics of death, adultery and romantic conflict, and makes brief reference to ancient Gnostic mysticism from the Apocryphon of John. Sonically, it incorporates Celtic choirs, African drums, and Amos's B-3 Hammond organ. The Beekeeper can be seen as a milestone for Amos, as it debuted within the top 10 on the Billboard 200, her fifth album to do so.
Barnstone's biblical work is The Restored New Testament, Including The Gnostic Gospels of Thomas, Mary, and Judas. In this annotated translation and commentary, he restores the Latin, Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew names to their original form. For Pilate, Andrew, Jesus and James, one reads Pilatus, Andreas, Yeshua, and Yaakov. To reveal the poetry of the New Testament, in the gospels he lineates Jesus's words as verse and renders Revelation and the Letters of Paul into blank verse.
The Marcosians were a Gnostic sect founded by Marcus, active in Lyon, France and southern Europe from the second to the 4th century. Women held special status in the Marcosian communities; they were regarded as prophetesses and participated in administering the Eucharistic rites. Irenaeus accuses Marcus of seducing his followers, and scornfully writes (Adversus Haereses I. 13, 4) that the whole sect was an affair of "silly women." The Marcosian system was a variation of that of Valentinus.
According to Aurobindo, full yogic development consists of two parts: the standard yogic goal of ascent into a formless and timeless self, and the descent and establishment of the supramental consciousness into Earthly life. Through integral yoga, one actualises the Supermind. The supramental consciousness transforms the entire being and leads to the divinisation of the material world. This supramental transformation gives rise to a new individual, the Gnostic being,Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, book II ch.
He marks the beginning of his interpretation of each verse with the main title and names the successive stages of his philosophical discussions with secondary titles such as "inspirational unveiling", "explanation and expansion", "merciful wisdom", and "note". According to Fazl Al Rahman, Sadra's religious works were written probably after maturing his philosophical thought. Hosein Nasr marks the commentaries as an important sample of hermeneutic and esoteric interpretation. These interpretations are based on philosophical, gnostic and intuitive approaches.
The final three sources are briefer and with more distinct biases: Evagrius features in some of the Apophthegmata literature, as well as in the church histories of Socrates and Sozomen.Konstantinovsky, Julia (2009) Evagrius Ponticus: The Making of a Gnostic, Farnham: Ashgate. Evagrius was born into a Christian family in the small town of Ibora, modern-day İverönü, ErbaaHarvey D. Egan, An Anthology of Mysticism (Liturgical Press 1991), p. 43 in the late Roman province of Helenopontus.
In Gnosticism the use becomes yet more stereotyped and technical, though its applications are still very variable. The Gnostic writers appeal to the use in the NT (e.g. Iren I. iii. 4), and the word retains from it the sense of totality in contrast to the constituent parts; but the chief associations of pleroma in their systems are with Greek philosophy, and the main thought is that of a state of completeness in contrast to deficiency (hysterema, Iren.
Rather, that ability is confined to the Few, a small subset of people. Additionally, the various Schools of magic only allow male practitioners, further dwindling the number of possible sorcerers. Even so, those who choose to study magic are granted large amounts of power, balanced by a lack of religious acceptance and a vulnerability to chorae, small spherical antimagic talismans. There are two main types of magic used in the northern Three Seas: Gnostic and Anagogic.
Bogomilism, a Gnostic, dualistic sect, was founded in the 10th century during the First Bulgarian Empire. It later spread throughout the Balkans and flourished after the fall of Bulgaria under Byzantine rule. The Eastern Orthodox Church considered the Bogomils, who preached civil disobedience that was particularly alarming for the state authorities, heretics. Bogomilism saw a major resurge in Bulgaria as a result of the military and political setbacks during the reign of Boril (r. 1207–18).
Their theology, neo-Gnostic in many ways, was basically dualist. Several of their practices, especially their belief in the inherent evil of the physical world, conflicted with the doctrines of the Incarnation of Christ and Catholic sacraments. This led to accusations of Gnosticism and attracted the ire of the Catholic establishment. They became known as the Albigensians, because there were many adherents in the city of Albi and the surrounding area in the 12th and 13th centuries.
Cerinthus utilized a gospel identical to that of the Ebionites, which the early church fathers identify as an unorthodox version of the Gospel of Matthew.Cf. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1.26.2 Unlike Marcion of Sinope, a 2nd-century Gnostic who was hostile to the God of the Hebrews proclaimed in the Law and prophets,Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1.27.2 Cerinthus recognized Jewish scripture and professed to follow the God of the Hebrews, though Cerinthus denied that he made the world.
Of the Anthem, Crowley writes in Confessions: :During this period [i.e. around 1913] the full interpretation of the central mystery of freemasonry became clear in consciousness, and I expressed it in dramatic form in The Ship. The lyrical climax is in some respects my supreme achievement in invocation; in fact, the chorus beginning: “Thou who art I beyond all I am...” seemed to me worthy to be introduced as the anthem into the Ritual of the Gnostic Catholic Church.
Solovyov compiled a philosophy based on Hellenistic philosophy (see Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus) and early Christian tradition with Buddhist and Hebrew Kabbalistic elements (Philo of Alexandria). He also studied Gnosticism and the works of the Gnostic Valentinus. His religious philosophy was syncretic and fused philosophical elements of various religious traditions with Orthodox Christianity and his own experience of Sophia. Solovyov described his encounters with the entity Sophia in his works, such as Three Encounters and Lectures on Godmanhood.
Like its successor VALIS, this novel is autobiographical. Dick himself is a major character, though fictitious protagonist Nicholas Brady serves as a vehicle for Dick's alleged gnostic theophany on February 11, 1974. In addition, Sadassa Silvia is a character who claims that Ferris Fremont is actually a communist covert agent recruited by Sadassa's mother when Fremont was still a teenager. As with VALIS, Radio Free Albemuth deals with Dick's highly personal style of Christianity (or Gnosticism).
Proponents view the world as evil to the core; the introversionist response is to withdraw from the earth as fully as possible. #Gnostic-manipulationist. Salvation is possible when people master the right means and techniques to overcome their problems. #Thaumaturgical. Individuals seek special local and magical dispensations which enable them to escape from the problems of the world. #Reformist. People must seek supernaturally- bestowed insights that enable them to mould the world toward good ends. #Utopian.
Aleister Crowley called Jurgen one of the "epoch-making masterpieces of philosophy" in 1929The Confessions of Aleister Crowley – the book contains a parody of Crowley's Gnostic Mass.Thelema Lodge Calendar for June 1998 e.v Crowley's famous phrase from The Book of the Law, "There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt"Liber AL, III:60—or its source, Rabelais's "there was but this one clause to be observed, Do What Thou Wilt"Rabelais, François. Gargantua and Pantagruel.
He discusses marriage, which is treated similarly in the Paedagogus. Clement rejects the Gnostic opposition to marriage, arguing that only men who are uninterested in women should remain celibate, and that sex is a positive good if performed within marriage for the purposes of procreation.Heid (2000), p. 65 He argues that this has not always been so: the Fall occurred because Adam and Eve succumbed to their desire for each other, and copulated before the allotted time.
The Divine Invasion is 1981 science fantasy novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It is the second book in the gnostic VALIS trilogy, and takes place in the indeterminate future, perhaps a century or more after VALIS. The novel, originally titled Valis Regained, was nominated to the BSFA Award. After the fall of Masada in AD 74, God, or "Yah", is exiled from Earth and forced to take refuge in the CY30-CY30B star system.
The Book of Elchasai or the Book of Elxai is a lost prophetic book, written during the reign of Trajan, that contained laws and apocalyptic prophecies pertaining to Jewish Christian and Gnostic doctrines. It is known only from fragments quoted in the early Christian writings of Hippolytus of Rome, Eusebius, Epiphanius of Salamis, and Origen. The book was used by a number of Transjordanian sects, including Ebionites, Essenes, Nazarenes, and especially by Elcesaites whom based their origins from.
Later Church fathers such as Irenaeus (Against Heresies 3.1.1) and Clement of Alexandria claim that Matthew preached the Gospel to the Jewish community in Judea, before going to other countries. Ancient writers are not in agreement as to which these other countries are. The Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church each hold the tradition that Matthew died as a martyr, although this was rejected by Heracleon, a Gnostic Christian viewed as a heretic, as early as the second century.
Tadeusz Miciński (9 November 1873, in Łódź – February 1918, in Cherykaw Raion, Belarus) was an influential Polish poet, gnostic and playwright, and was a forerunner of Expressionism and Surrealism. He is one of the writers of the Young Poland period (Neoromanticism movement). His writings are strong influenced by Dark Romanticism and Romantic gothic fiction, with a focus on moral battles between good and evil. He was called by many a wizard poet and a worshipper of mysteries.
Some examples of the genre may be found in Old Testament, such as the Book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, or apocryphal literature. The riddles of the poem may presuppose a classical Gnostic myth, such as the one found in the Reality of the Rulers, or in the Secret Book of John. The original language of the poem was Greek, though only a Coptic version survives in the Nag Hammadi library; the manuscript resides in the Coptic Museum in Cairo.
Jesus suffering on the cross is depicted as the state of light particles (spirit) within matter instead.Willis Barnstone, Marvin Meyer The Gnostic Bible: Revised and Expanded Edition Shambhala Publications 2009 p. 596 According to Bogomilism, the crucifixion was an attempt by Lucifer to destroy Jesus, while the earthly Jesus was regarded as a prophet, Jesus himself was an immaterial being that can not be killed. Accordingly, Lucifer failed and Jesus' sufferings on the cross were only an illusion.
Marcionism was an Early Christian dualist belief system that originated in the teachings of Marcion of Sinope in Rome around the year 144.(115 years and 6 months from the Crucifixion, according to Tertullian's reckoning in Adversus Marcionem, xv) Marcion was the son of a bishop of Sinope in Pontus. About the middle of the second century (140–155) he traveled to Rome, where he joined the Syrian Gnostic Cerdo.History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante- Nicene Christianity.
The Apostles themselves were involved in challenging the doctrines and claims of various teachers. The Apostle Paul wrote an entire epistle, Galatians, antagonistic to the teachings of a Jewish sect that claimed adherence to the teachings of both Jesus and Moses (cf. Acts 15: & Gal. 1:6-10). The First Epistle of John is devoted to countering early proto-gnostic cults that had arisen in the first century, all claiming to be "Christian" (1 Jn. 2:19).
The Naassene Fragment is a fragmentary text that survives in no document except a quotation in the early third century encyclopedia of heresies by Hippolytus of Rome called Refutation of All Heresies (5.7.2-9). It may be considered part of the New Testament apocryphal tradition. The Naassenes (from Hebrew na'asch, snake) were a Gnostic Ophite sect. The fragmentary quotation is given by Hippolytus as expressing the fundamental ideas of the Naassene Ophites, and possibly of all Gnostics.
This idea is also seen in depth psychology as it is related to alchemy, where the Self continually, cyclically faces what it has repressed in order to integrate what has been repressed into itself. The term also appears in the Benediction at the end of Crowley's Gnostic Mass, where the Priest blesses the congregation with the words: > The LORD bring you to the accomplishment of your true Wills, the Great Work, > the Summum Bonum, True Wisdom and Perfect Happiness.
Located on the west bank of the Nile in the Qena Governorate. It is known for being near the Jabal al- Tarif cliff James McConkey Robinson, Richard Smith books.google.co.uk The Nag Hammadi library in English BRILL, 1996 [Retrieved 2011-12-16] in which the Gnostic Gospels of the Nag Hammadi library were found see description for image 25 - photographs taken at the time of an excavation retrieved 17:32 (UTC) 24.10.2011 by Mohammed Ali Samman in December 1945.
The envoys traveled to Denmark via Aragon and the south of France. The marriage negotiations ended successfully, but the princess died before leaving for Castile. Around 1205, Dominic, along with Diego de Acebo, began a program in the south of France, to convert the Cathars, a Christian religious sect with gnostic and dualistic beliefs, which the Roman Catholic Church deemed heretical. As part of this, Catholic-Cathar public debates were held at Verfeil, Servian, Pamiers, Montréal and elsewhere.
Córdova's singing while making his plant extracts is analogous to what Carl Jung found about the psychology of the medieval "drugist and apothecary". Their "knowledge of the techniques" used in making their medicinal preparations was informed by "Gnostic philosophical speculations" regarding hidden forces in nature. Carl Jung, "Der Geist Mercurius" in Eranos Jahrbuch 1942 (Zürich), translated as "The Spirit Mercurius" in Alchemical Studies [CW, v.13] (Princeton University: Bollingen series 1967, 1983) 191–250, at 204–05.
According to them it could have belonged to the Gospel according to the Egyptians (as postulated by Adolf Harnack), or a collections of Jesus's Sayings used in the Second Epistle of Clement. Grenfell and Hunt observed some similarities to the P. Oxy. 654. The only complete copy of the Gospel of Thomas was found in 1945 when a Coptic version was discovered at Nag Hammadi with a collection of early Christian Gnostic texts. In 1904, P. Oxy.
The Gospel of Basilides is the title given to a reputed text within the New Testament apocrypha, which is reported in the middle of the third century as then circulating amongst the followers of Basilides (Βασιλείδης), a leading theologian of Gnostic tendencies, who had taught in Alexandria in the second quarter of the second century. Basilides's teachings were condemned as heretical by Irenaeus of Lyons (c.130 – c.200),Haer. 1.24.4 and by Hippolytus of Rome (c.
One Gnostic mythos describes the declination of aspects of the divine into human form. Sophia (Greek: Σοφία, lit. "wisdom"), the Demiurge's mother and partial aspect of the divine Pleroma or "Fullness," desired to create something apart from the divine totality, without the receipt of divine assent. In this act of separate creation, she gave birth to the monstrous Demiurge and, being ashamed of her deed, wrapped him in a cloud and created a throne for him within it.
The goal is not to fully awaken her or him, but rather to bring them to the brink of wakefulness. Not all authors agree that the ritualist seer will be in a state between sleep and wakefulness, instead noting that exhaustion will lead to a trance, or "sleep of lucidity".See: Newcomb, Sexual Sorcery: A Complete Guide to Sex Magick, 2005, p. 71; Frater U.D., Secrets of Western Sex Magic: Magical Energy and Gnostic Trance, 2001, p. 130.
Irenaeus, the late 2nd century bishop of Lyon, was an outspoken premillennialist. He is best known for his voluminous tome written against the 2nd century Gnostic threat, commonly called Against Heresies. In the fifth book of Against Heresies, Irenaeus concentrates primarily on eschatology. In one passage he defends premillennialism by arguing that a future earthly kingdom is necessary because of God's promise to Abraham, he wrote “The promise remains steadfast... God promised him the inheritance of the land.
Sloane highly recommended the book The Gnostic Religion, and sections of it were sometimes read at ceremonies.Black Magic, Satanism, Voodoo, by Dr. Leo L. Martello, 1972 (Interview with Sloane on pp. 31–34, Our Lord Sathanas) The Church of Satan, founded by Anton Szandor LaVey in 1966, views Satan not as a literal god and merely a symbol. Still, this organization does believe in magic and incorporates it in their practice, distinguishing between Lesser and Greater forms.
Whore of Babylon. Painted by Gnostic Saint William Blake in 1809. The Whore of Babylon is referred to in several places in the Book of Revelation, a book which may have had an influence on Thelema, as Aleister Crowley says he read it as a child and imagined himself as the Beast. She is described in Chapter 17:3-6: Aleister Crowley recorded his view of the Book of Revelation in The Vision and the Voice.
The Sethians were one of the main currents of Gnosticism during the 2nd and 3rd century CE, along with Valentinianism and Basilideanism. According to John D. Turner, it originated in the 2nd-century CE as a fusion of two distinct Hellenistic Judaic philosophies and was influenced by Christianity and Middle Platonism. However, the exact origin of Sethianism is not properly understood.Tuomas Rasimus Paradise Reconsidered in Gnostic Mythmaking: Rethinking Sethianism in Light of the Ophite Evidence BRILL, 31.10.
The existing copy in the Cairo Coptic Museum was translated from Greek to Coptic sometime before A.D. 352. The hymns themselves presuppose familiarity with the generally accepted Sethian Gnostic mythical structure as presented in Zostrianos and The Apocryphon of John. The Steles contain a total of seven hymns followed by directions for use of the hymns. The first Stele begins with a report of Dositheus explaining how he saw the tablets in a vision he had.
The Gospel of Perfection is a lost text from the New Testament apocrypha. The text is mentioned in ancient anti-heretical works by the church fathers. It is thought to be a gnostic text of the Ophites, and is believed by some to be the same as the Gospel of Eve, though the words of Saint Epiphanius implied that they were separate Gospels. Some others also believe that it was the same as the Gospel of Philip.
Quispel completed his doctoral work in 1943 at Utrecht University with a dissertation examining the sources utilized in Tertullian's Adversus Marcionem. He devoted study to several Gnostic systems, particularly Valentinianism. In 1948-1949 he spent a year in Rome as a Bollingen fellow and was appointed Professor of the History of the Early Church at Utrecht University in 1951. Quispel served as a visiting professor at Harvard University in 1964-1965 and at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 1968.
Despite this apparent contradiction, most modern Esoteric Christian movements refer to Origen's writings (along with other Church Fathers and biblical passagesSee Reincarnation and Christianity) to validate these ideas as part of the Esoteric Christian tradition outside of the Gnostic schools, who were later considered heretical in the 3rd century.Archeosofica, Articles on Esoteric Christianity (classical authors) Scholar Jan Shipps describes The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as having esoteric elements.Shipps, Jan. The Mormons: Looking Forward and Outward.
Wynkoop taught the decisive moment of salvation was justification and that believers received the Holy Spirit at that time. She did not connect the baptism of the Spirit with entire sanctification. Wynkoop advocated: > Ontological trichotomy, a recent revival of Gnostic thought in some > Christian circles, undermines a concept of the unity of personality so > basically assumed in Hebrew thought. It raises no barriers to-in fact it > actually suggests and encourages-a virtual depersonalizing of the self.
Each being subsists by its relationship to one of these divine attributes or names. The divine names can be understood in two ways: In the first way, they are hidden but are mirrors which reflect the truth and manifest the truth into the world. In the second way, they are apparent and the truth mirrors them but in the process the truth becomes hidden. Fayz argues that the perfect gnostic is one who contemplates both of these mirrors.
The literature on the connection between Lucifer and Prometheus made in 19th-century art and literature is vast. See, for instance, discussion of Goethe and the Gnostic Lucifer in Steven M. Wasserstrom, Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos (Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 210ff. online. Discussion of Lucifer in Strindberg's Coram Populo in Harry Gilbert Carlson, Out of Inferno: Strindberg's Reawakening as an Artist (University of Washington Press, 1996), pp. 103–106 online.
Rivera, David Allen. Illuminati Spreads to America: Final Warning: A History of the New World Order which alleges Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin were members. Such theories are alluded to in the Illuminati Project Memo #7 in The Eye in the Pyramid which alleges Jefferson and George Washington were members. The books are loaded with references to the Illuminati, the Argenteum Astrum, many and various world domination plans, conspiracy theories and pieces of gnostic knowledge.
There also exists another manner of operation, where Pasquallys original system is practiced more in tune with the intents of the system as it were in the 1770s, where neo-gnostic tendencies and kabbalah is removed, in favor of the original doctrines. In France one such circle is supposed to exist, but not in public. Officially, Ordre Reaux Croix is working the Elus Cohens in a similar manner, and also including women, as Pasqually himself did on two occasions.
Valentinian Gnosticism was one of the major forms of Gnosticism that Irenaeus opposed. According to the Gnostic view of Salvation, creation was perfect to begin with; it did not need time to grow and mature. For the Valentinians, the material world is the result of the loss of perfection which resulted from Sophia's desire to understand the Forefather. Therefore, one is ultimately redeemed, through secret knowledge, to enter the pleroma of which the Achamoth originally fell.
Protestant theologians emphasized Jesus' statement of the superiority of "faith alone" (see sola fide), although the evangelical-leaning Anglican Thomas Hartwell Horne, in his widely read Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures (first published in 1818) treated Thomas's incredulity, which he extended somewhat to the other apostles, approvingly, as evidence both of the veracity of the gospels, as a "forger" would be unlikely to have invented it, and of their proper suspicion of the seemingly impossible, demonstrating their reliability as witnesses. In the early church, Gnostic authors were very insistent that Thomas did not actually examine Jesus, and elaborated on this in apocryphal accounts, perhaps tending to push their non-Gnostic opponents in the other direction. The theological interpretation of the episode has concentrated on it as a demonstration of the reality of the resurrection, but as early as the writings of the 4th- and 5th-century saints John Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria it had been given a eucharistic interpretation, seen as an allegory of the sacrament of the Eucharist, what remained a recurring theme in commentary.
The Stichometry of Nicephorus shows that the Prayer of Joseph had a length of eleven hundred lines, thus only a very short part has survived. Due to the shortness of the extant text, it is almost impossible to determine the provenance. Some scholars suggest it should be considered Jewish-Christian, others gnostic, others Jewish anti-Christian, others Christian anti-Jewish, while the probable thesis according to J. Z. Smith and others is that Origen was right to consider it Jewish.
The Gnostic deity Abraxas is used as a symbol throughout the text, idealizing the interdependence of all that is good and evil in the world. Demian argues that Jehovah, the Jewish God, is only one face of God; it rules over all that is wholesome, but there is another half of the world, and an infinite god must encompass both sides of this world. The symbol of Abraxas appears as a bird breaking free from an egg or a globe.
There are seven symbols of particular importance to the Society's symbology: #the seal of the Society #a serpent biting its tail #the gnostic cross (near the serpent's head) #the interlaced triangles #the cruxansata (in the centre) #the pin of the Society, composed of cruxansata and serpent entwined, forming together "T.S.", and #Om (or aum), the sacred syllable of the Vedas. The seal of the Society contains all of these symbols, except aum, and thus contains, in symbolic form, the doctrines its members follow.
Valis (stylized as VALIS) is a 1981 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick, it is one book of a three part series. The title is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, Dick's gnostic vision of one aspect of God. The book features heavy auto-biographical elements, and draws inspiration from Dick's own religious experiences over the previous decade. It is the first book in the incomplete VALIS trilogy of novels, followed by The Divine Invasion (1981).
The grandmother cell, sometimes called the "Jennifer Aniston neuron", is a hypothetical neuron that represents a complex but specific concept or object. It activates when a person "sees, hears, or otherwise sensibly discriminates" a specific entity, such as his or her grandmother. The term was in use at least as early as 1966 amongst staff and students in the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, England. A similar concept, that of the gnostic neuron, was proposed two years later by Jerzy Konorski.
Throughout The Secret Magdalene, Longfellow weaves historical facts and personages in her own interpretation of the Christ story. Longfellow said she based her choice of name for her lead character on the Nag Hammadi Papers, a collection of ancient Gnostic material found in 1945 in Egypt. All editions of the book include a comprehensive though selected bibliography of materials used by Longfellow. The novel has been praised by some theologians and historians but it was not reviewed in any major newspapers or journals.
Brown was brought up in a Baptist household, and in his early twenties he began adapting the Gospels. Brown later said that this "was a matter of trying to figure out whether even believed the Christian claims—whether or not Jesus was divine". During this time, Brown went through periods where he considered himself an agnostic then a gnostic. Since then, Brown has consistently described himself as religious, but has alternated between periods of identifying as a Christian and simply believing in God.
Edited and > with a Preface by David Middleton. Santa Barbara, California: John Daniel > and Company, 1992. Page 86. He died on February 17, 1991, leaving behind: three published chapbooks of poems as well as unpublished and uncollected poems, three essays from an unfinished book on the Greeks, an unpublished book of essays on the Gnostic spirit in modern literature—Flaubert in Egypt and Other Essays—and several journals he kept in Enterprise, on Corfu, in Paris, and in Baton Rouge.
Within early Christianity, the teachings of Paul and John may have been a starting point for Gnostic ideas, with a growing emphasis on the opposition between flesh and spirit, the value of charisma, and the disqualification of the Jewish law. The mortal body belonged to the world of inferior, worldly powers (the archons), and only the spirit or soul could be saved. The term gnostikos may have acquired a deeper significance here. Alexandria was of central importance for the birth of Gnosticism.
In the early third century, Sethianism was fully rejected by Christian heresiologists, as Sethianism shifted toward the contemplative practices of Platonism while losing interest in their primal origins. In the late third century, Sethianism was attacked by neo-Platonists like Plotinus, and Sethianism became alienated from Platonism. In the early- to mid-fourth century, Sethianism fragmented into various sectarian Gnostic groups such as the Archontics, Audians, Borborites, and Phibionites, and perhaps Stratiotici, and Secundians. Some of these groups existed into the Middle Ages.
According to Moncur, "Gnostic", a free jazz piece "which eliminates a pulsating meter", should represent the achievement of salvation through the expression of knowledge and wisdom.Liner notes by Don Heckman "Thandiwa" means "beloved one" in the Zulu language, and it is the least experimental track of the album. With "The Twins", built off only one chord, he wanted to portray his twin brothers; he considered the rhythm the focal point of the composition. "Nomadic" is centered on a drum solo by Tony Williams.
There were those in Paul's time that forbade marriage on heretical presuppositions that marriage was intrinsically evil, a teaching based in turn on the false belief that the body or all matter was evil, and only the Spirit was good. This Gnostic heresy became prevalent again in the second century. The heresy became manifest in later centuries as well, with groups like the Albigensians, who also fell away from the Catholic Faith. ...With regard to foods, none are forbidden to Catholics.
Some fathers of the fourth and later centuries protested against Gnostic phylacteries worn by Christians.cf. St. Jerome, "In Matt.", iv, 33; P. L., XXVI, 174 A coin-like object found in catacombs bears on one side a depiction of the martyrdom of a saint, presumably St. Lawrence, who is being roasted upon a gridiron in the presence of the Roman magistrate. The Christian character of the scene is shown by the chi-rho chrisma, the alpha and omega, and the martyr's crown.
Uniquely, the Gnostic religion held that the tree was entirely positive or even sacred. Per this saga, it was the archons who told Adam and Eve not to eat from its fruit then lied to them by claiming they would die after tasting it. But later in the story, an instructor is sent from the Pleroma by the aeons to save humanity and reveal gnosis. This savior does so by telling Adam and Eve that eating the fruit is the way into salvation.
In some traditions he is also believed to be the father of Cain,Jewish Encyclopedia – Samael as well as the partner of Lilith. As guardian angel and prince of Rome, he is the archenemy of Israel. By the beginning of Jewish culture in Europe, Samael had been established as a representative of Christianity, due to his identification with Rome. In some Gnostic cosmologies, Samael's role as source of evil became identified with the Demiurge, the creator of the material world.
Schelling, at all stages of his thought, called to his aid outward forms of some other system. Fichte, Spinoza, Jakob Boehme and the mystics, and finally, major Greek thinkers with their Neoplatonic, Gnostic, and Scholastic commentators, give colouring to particular works. In Schelling's own view, his philosophy fell into three stages. These were: #Transition from Fichte's philosophy to a more objective conception of nature (an advance to Naturphilosophie) #Formulation of the identical, indifferent, absolute substratum of both nature and spirit (Identitätsphilosophie).
Babel, in the book of "Baruch" of the Gnostic Justin, the name of the first of the twelve "maternal angels" born to Elohim and Edem (Hipp. Haer. v. 26, p. 151). She is identical with Aphrodite, and is enjoined by her mother to cause adulteries and desertions among men, in revenge for Edem's desertion by Elohim (p. 154). When Heracles is sent by Elohim as "a prophet of the uncircumcision" to overcome "the twelve evil angels of the creation," i. e.
Under Central Asian influence, the "four-fold Father of Greatness" was split up (from left) into the Hindu deities Ganesha, Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva. Leaf from a Manichaean book MIK III 4979, 8th–9th century, discovered in Karakhoja. The Father of Greatness (Syriac-Aramaic: ; ) is the eternal divine manifestation of good in Manichaeism,Willis Barnstone, Marvin Meyer. The Gnostic Bible: Revised and Expanded Edition, Shambhala Publications, 2009, , pages 4, 595, 827 and a four-fold deity, embracing divinity, light, power and goodness.
Tod Wodicka's essays, criticism and fiction has appeared in The Guardian, Granta, Tank (magazine), New Statesman, South as a State of Mind, AnOther Magazine, The National, Art Papers, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 3. He wrote the afterword to David Tibet of Current 93's art book, Some Gnostic Cartoons. He has been a resident at Yaddo; a literary fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany; and a writer in residence at Het beschrijf at Passa Porta in Belgium.
The various institutions of sorcerers in the world of Eärwa are referred to as Schools. The dominant Schools are The Mandate - Gnostic School founded by Seswatha in 2156 in order to continue the war against the Consult and to protect the Three Seas from the return of the No-God, Mog-Pharau. Their power is the Gnosis. The Scarlet Spires - Anagogic School which is the most powerful in the Three Seas and de facto ruler of High Ainon since 3818.
The 7th Sea RPG is set in a world that draws direct influence from the literature of 17th century Europe. Each country in the world can be compared to a European kingdom but is an exaggerated representation. Sorcery is a large part of the world with many types available to players. The dominant religion in the world, the belief in Theus and his prophets, is based on a form of Gnostic Christianity and features a parallel of the Spanish Inquisition.
His thinking, which is evident from his later works, is influenced by mystics and romantic philosophers. He was also partly influenced by gnostic beliefs. Not proper, perhaps, in the Christian 19th century Sweden, this possible belief has been thoroughly examined, and is believed to have originated by a reading of the Swedish translation of Ginza Rba, the holy works of the Mandaeism, published as Adam's Book. Other persons whose works he read and were likely influences were Schelling, Jakob Böhme and Plato.
Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet used a variety of sub-periods including decans, but Patrizia advocated that the ninefold division of each sign was the most powerful and influential sub-division.Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet, The Gnostic Circle, Samual Weiser Inc, New York, 1978, pp. 105–122 The ninefold division (termed 'navamsa') of the zodiacal signs is also the most popular sign sub-division system employed by Vedic astrologers. Vedic astrologers also apply their nakshatra star asterisms in place of the twelve zodiacal constellations.
Noble Drew Ali of the Moorish Science Temple of America. During the first half of the 20th century, a small number of African Americans established groups based on Islamic and Gnostic teachings. The first of these groups was the Moorish Science Temple of America, founded by Timothy Drew (Drew Ali) in 1913. Drew taught that black people were of Moorish origin but their Muslim identity was taken away through slavery and racial segregation, advocating the return to Islam of their Moorish ancestry.
In Matthew 19:12, Jesus discusses eunuchs who were born as such, eunuchs who were made so by others, and eunuchs who choose to live as such for the kingdom of heaven. Clement of Alexandria wrote in his commentary on it that "some men, from their birth, have a natural sense of repulsion from a woman; and those who are naturally so constituted do well not to marry".Clement of Alexandria: The Stromata, or Miscellanies. Book III, Chapter I. The Gnostic Society Library.
Although there were arguments among the commune members, Parsons remained dedicated to Thelema. He gave almost all of his salary to the O.T.O. while actively seeking out new membersincluding Formanand financially supported Crowley in London through Germer. Parsons had begun a relationship with Sara Northrup, while Smith consoled Helen, who would become his partner for the rest of his life; nevertheless the four remained friends. Although they had ceased to publicly perform the Gnostic Mass, membership of the lodge continued to grow.
Unlike the spiritual leaders, the authority of the ' is limited to the country he is elected in, though in some instances spiritual leaders are elected to this position. The Druze believe in the unity of God, and are often known as the "People of Monotheism" or simply "Monotheists". Their theology has a Neo-Platonic view about how God interacts with the world through emanations and is similar to some gnostic and other esoteric sects. Druze philosophy also shows Sufi influences.
Women have been recorded to have made major contributions to alchemy. Many of which lived in Alexandria around the 1st or 2nd centuries AD, where the gnostic tradition led to female contributions being valued. The most famous of the women alchemist, Mary the Jewess, is credited with inventing several chemical instruments, including the double boiler (bain-marie); the improvement or creation of distillation equipment of that time. Such distillation equipment were called kerotakis (simple still) and the tribikos (a complex distillation device).
Ephrem, in his late fifties, applied himself to ministry in his new church and seems to have continued his work as a teacher, perhaps in the School of Edessa. Edessa had always been at the heart of the Syriac-speaking world, and the city was full of rival philosophies and religions. Ephrem comments that orthodox Nicene Christians were simply called "Palutians" in Edessa, after a former bishop. Arians, Marcionites, Manichees, Bardaisanites and various gnostic sects proclaimed themselves as the true church.
It was later occupied by other artists; notably Nicolas de Staël and the sculptor, , both of whom died there. She became an adept of René Guénon and a passionate admirer of the young Krishnamurti. In 1932, she wrote Les Trois Couleurs de la Lumière, in which she expounded her esoteric vision of art. In addition to Guénon, she was inspired by the theories of the aesthetician, Charles Henry, and the gnostic, Paul-François-Gaspard Lacuria (1806-1890), author of The Harmonies of Being.
In the first class, Timothy lists Manichaeans, Tascodrugites, Ebionites, Valentinians, Basilideans, Montanists, Eunomians, Paulianists, Photinians, Marcellians, Sabellians, Simonians, Menandrians, Cerinthians, Saturninians, Carpocratians, Marcosians, Apelleasts, Theodotians, Elcesaites, Nepotians, Marcionites, Artotyrites, Saccophori, Apotactics, Encratites, Hydroparastatae, Nicolaitans, Melchisedechites, Pelagians and Caelestians. These are mostly early heresies, many of them Gnostic sects. They represent theoretical problems more than actual ones, since few of them would have been active in Timothy's time. For this reason, Timothy does not distinguish between "elect" and "hearers" among the Manichaeans.
The Epistle of Eugnostos is one of many Gnostic tractates from the Nag Hammadi library, discovered in Egypt in 1945. The Nag Hammadi codices contain two full copies of this tractate. The epistle was a familiar literary convention of Antiquity; it is not to be supposed that this essay is an actual letter written by a man named Eugnostos ("right thinking", sometimes Eugnostus). The text is devoid of any specifically Christian themes or associations, and simply describes the esoteric cosmology of the gnostics.
Travels to > Paris for six months as a National Endowment for the Arts Exchange Fellow > and is commissioned by the Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges > Pompidou to produce a new work. In the first major collaboration with George > Quasha, adapts selected Gnostic texts and eventually produces the > installation Disturbance (among the jars). Meets Jacques Derrida who plays a > central figure in the piece. 1989 Produces Site Recite (a prologue), > commissioned for Spanish Television as part of the series El Arte del Video.
The book is about Braverman Shaw, whose father, Dexter Shaw, is killed by an explosion. After his death, Braverman, or Bravo to his friends, finds out that his father was a member of the Gnostic Observant, a group who possess a very old secret of Jesus Christ. Bravo has to find the secret and keep it hidden from their sworn enemies, the Knights of Saint-Clemens. His father left behind a maze, which Bravo has to solve to find the secret.
The 10th-century Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity features a fictional anecdote of a "prince who strays from his palace during his wedding feast and, drunk, spends the night in a cemetery, confusing a corpse with his bride. The story is used as a gnostic parable of the soul's pre-existence and return from its terrestrial sojourn".Hamori, p. 18. Another medieval Arabic love story was Hadith Bayad wa Riyad (The Story of Bayad and Riyad), a 13th-century Arabic love story.
The text follows the traditional biblical story but also incorporates text from the King James Bible, the Wakefield Mystery Plays, Martin Luther's Christmas Sermon, the Gospel of Luke, and several gnostic gospels from the Apocrypha. Also included are poems by Rosario Castellanos, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Gabriela Mistral, Vicente Huidobro, Rubén Darío, librettist Peter Sellars, and Adams himself. He also quotes Gabriela Mistral's "The Christmas Star" and incorporates a choral setting of "" by Hildegard von Bingen.El Niño, earbox.
In On the Origin of the World, the archons impregnate the Biblical Eve, an idea probably deriving from the Sons of God in or the Book of Enoch.Tuomas Rasimus Paradise Reconsidered in Gnostic Mythmaking: Rethinking Sethianism in Light of the Ophite Evidence BRILL p. 194 In accordance with the depictions of fallen angels in the Enochian writings, the archons incite passions to humans. Further, they both teach idolatry, sacrifices and bloodshed to enslave the Gnostics and trapping them in ignorance.
The Johannite Church, properly known by its full name, l'Église Johannite des Chrétiens Primitifs (The Johannite Church of Primitive Christians), is a Gnostic Christian denomination founded by the French priest Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat in 1804."The Gnostics: History, Tradition, Scriptures, Influence" by Andrew Phillip Smith, Watkins, 2008 Hermetic.com The Johannite Church received its full name in 1828 after Fabré-Palaprat's claimed discovery of the Levitikon gospels.Rev. Donald Donato, The Lévitikon: The Gospels According to The Primitive Church (Apostolic Johannite Church, 2010).
The law of necessary procession and the eternity of the universe (ch.3). Attack on the Gnostic doctrine of the making of the universe by a fallen soul, and on their despising of the universe and the heavenly bodies (chs. 4–5). The senseless jargon of the Gnostics, their plagiarism from and perversion of Plato, and their insolent arrogance (ch. 6). The true doctrine about Universal Soul and the goodness of the universe which it forms and rules (chs. 7–8).
The Living Gospel (also Great Gospel, Gospel of the Living and variants) was a 3rd-century gnostic gospel written by Mani. It was originally written in Syriac and called the Evangelion (Syriac: ܐܘܢܓܠܝܘܢ), from the Greek: εὐαγγέλιον ("good news")G. Haloun and W.B. Henning, "The Compendium of the Doctrines and Styles of the Teaching of Mani the Buddha of Light", Asia Major, N. S. 3 (1952), 182-212, p. 205. and was one of the seven original scriptures of Manichaeism.
Means receives a vision herself during the conversation, and becomes convinced that McKenna is a prophet of some sort. Black thinks the girl is acting out, but Means reveals that she is reciting passages from the non-canonical Gnostic Gospels, which supposed that Mary Magdalene was the only disciple to fully understand the teachings of Jesus Christ. Means believes the girls are not seeing visions of Saint Mary, but of Mary Magdalene. Later, Black is informed that the girls are missing.
It has also been suggested that both the graffito and the roughly contemporary gems with Crucifixion images are related to heretical groups outside the Church.Schiller, 89-90 The most common interpretation is that this graffito depicts Jesus of Nazareth. However, Hudson MacLean considers the image can either depict Jesus or Anubis. Other searchers considers that the graffito represents either "probably a scene of Gnostic worship, representing the Egyptian God Anubis", or that the crucified being was the god Set or Typhon- Set.
The names of their respective characters reflect this: Flux as the self-directed agent from Monica and Goodchild as the technocratic leader of Bregna. The term Æon comes from the Gnostic notion of Æons as emanations of the God, who come in male/female pairs (here Flux and Goodchild). This juxtaposition also maps accordingly to the characterizations of Eris and Greyface in the Discordian mythos. Further mythic parallels can be drawn in likening Goodchild to Apollo and Flux to Artemis.
NHC II, the end of the Apocryphon of John, the beginning of the Gospel of Thomas NHC II, the end of the Gospel of Thomas Nag Hammadi Codex II (designated by siglum CG II) is a papyrus codex with a collection of early Christian Gnostic texts in Coptic (Sahidic dialect). The manuscript has survived in nearly perfect condition. The codex is dated to the 4th century. It is the only complete manuscript from antiquity with the text of the Gospel of Thomas.
As an editor of the monastic publishing records and as brilliant connoisseur in many classical and living languages, Kalistrat Zografski first translated and printed services of St. Kliment, St. Naum and Seven Saints, from Old Slavonic, encoded by the famous Moscopolski Code. He died in monastic Zograf's cell in 1914 year. Due to his humble, gnostic, ascetic life, he is considered as one of the most beloved clerics of the athonite monastery Zografos. His relics are today stored in Zograf's monastic ossuary.
Netanel Lederberg claims that Frank had a Gnostic philosophy wherein there was a "true God" whose existence was hidden by a "false God". This "true God" could allegedly only be revealed through a total destruction of the social and religious structures created by the "false God", thus leading to a thorough antinomianism. For Frank, the very distinction between good and evil is a product of a world governed by the "false God". Lederberg compares Frank's position to that of Friedrich Nietzsche.
Although the serpent is not mentioned in the Quran, Quranic commentaries as well as the Stories of the Prophets added the serpent borrowed from Gnostic and Jewish oral tradition circulating in the Arabian Peninsula.El-Zein, pages 98-99 Iblis tries to enter the abode of Adam, but the angelic guardian keeps him away. Then Iblis invents a plan to trick the guardian. He approaches a peacock and tells him that all creatures will die and the peacock's beauty will perish.
Goodrick-Clarke (2005) p. 1, 30-1 Jung saw the Gnostics not as syncretic schools of mixed theological doctrines, but as genuine visionaries, and saw their imagery not as myths but as records of inner experience.Goodrick-Clarke (2005) p. 30 He wrote that "The explanation of Gnostic ideas 'in terms of themselves,' i.e., in terms of their historical foundations, is futile, for in that way they are reduced only to their less developed forestages but not understood in their actual significance."Jung (1977) p.
Kreiman G, Fried I, Koch C. 2001. Single neuron responses in humans during binocular rivalry and flash suppression. Abstr Soc Neurosci 27 However most of the reported face-selective cells are not grandmother/gnostic cells since they do not represent a specific percept, that is, they are not cells narrowly selective in their activations for one face and only one face irrespective of transformations of size, orientation, and color. Even the most selective face cells usually also discharge, if more weakly, to a variety of individual faces.
Yet these fathers held not one doctrine peculiar to Universalism; neither did they believe in the salvation of all men." Some scholars believe that Clement used the term apocatastasis to refer only to the "restoration" of a select few.Andrew C. Itter, Esoteric teaching in the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria, 2009, p. 200, "Clement uses the term apokatastasis and its cognates generally to refer to the gnostic elect rather than to an eschatological restoration of the universe, or to a restoration of the faithful as a whole.
In the 1880s Gnostic connections with neo-Platonism were proposed. Ugo Bianchi, who organised the Congress of Messina of 1966 on the origins of Gnosticism, also argued for Orphic and Platonic origins. Gnostics borrowed significant ideas and terms from Platonism, using Greek philosophical concepts throughout their text, including such concepts as hypostasis (reality, existence), ousia (essence, substance, being), and demiurge (creator God). Both Sethian Gnostics and Valentinian Gnostics seem to have been influenced by Plato, Middle Platonism, and Neo-Pythagoreanism academies or schools of thought.
Pleroma (Greek πλήρωμα, "fullness") refers to the totality of God's powers. The heavenly pleroma is the center of divine life, a region of light "above" (the term is not to be understood spatially) our world, occupied by spiritual beings such as aeons (eternal beings) and sometimes archons. Jesus is interpreted as an intermediary aeon who was sent from the pleroma, with whose aid humanity can recover the lost knowledge of the divine origins of humanity. The term is thus a central element of Gnostic cosmology.
After its decline in the Mediterranean world, Gnosticism lived on in the periphery of the Byzantine Empire, and resurfaced in the western world. The Paulicians, an Adoptionist group which flourished between 650 and 872 in Armenia and the Eastern Themes of the Byzantine Empire, were accused by orthodox medieval sources of being Gnostic and quasi Manichaean Christian. The Bogomils, emerged in Bulgaria between 927 and 970 and spread throughout Europe. It was as synthesis of Armenian Paulicianism and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church reform movement.
The history of Christian exegesis may be roughly divided into three periods: the Age of the Fathers, the Age of Catenæ and Scholia (seventh to sixteenth century), and the Age of Modern Commentaries (sixteenth to twentieth century). The earliest known commentary on Christian scriptures was by a Gnostic named Heracleon in . Most of the patristic commentaries are in the form of homilies, or discourses to the faithful, and range over the whole of Scripture. There are two schools of interpretation, that of Alexandria and that of Antioch.
In contrast with the religious texts of the western Gnostic sects formerly found in Syria and Egypt, the earliest Mandaean religious texts suggest a more strictly dualistic theology, typical of other Iranian religions such as Zoroastrianism, Zurvanism, Manichaeism, and the teachings of Mazdak. In these texts, instead of a large pleroma, there is a discrete division between light and darkness. The Mandaean God is known as Hayyi Rabbi (The Great Living God). Other names used are Mare d'Rabuta (Lord of Greatness) and Melka d'Nhura (King of Light).
Although during the Hellenistic period, the town was of some mercantile importance, by the 1st century it had dwindled greatly in size and significance. Paul's letter to the Colossians point to the existence of an early Christian community. The town was known for its fusion of religious influences (syncretism), which included Jewish, Gnostic, and pagan influences that in the first century AD were described as an angel-cult. A further, less stable online source with access to these pages is available at , accessed same date.
In the Bogomil and Cathar text Gospel of the secret supper, Lucifer is a glorified angel and the older brother of Jesus, but fell from heaven to establish his own kingdom and became the Demiurge. Therefore, he created the material world and trapped souls from heaven inside matter. Jesus descended to earth to free the captured souls.Michael C. Thomsett Heresy in the Roman Catholic Church: A History McFarland 2011 page 71Willis Barnstone, Marvin Meyer The Gnostic Bible: Revised and Expanded Edition Shambhala Publications 2009 p.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is a biographical gospel about the childhood of Jesus, believed to date at the latest to the second century. It does not form part of any biblical canon. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is thought to be Gnostic in origin. Later references (by Hippolytus of Rome and Origen of Alexandria) to a "Gospel of Thomas" are not at all referring to this Infancy Gospel, as many modern scholars have thought, but rather to the wholly different Gospel of Thomas.
Somatics were human in form, but since their entire focus was on the material world, such as eating, sleeping, mating or creature comforts, they were seen as doomed. The pneumatic saw himself as escaping the doom of the material world via the secret knowledge. Somatics were thought to be incapable of understanding. For consideration of these dynamics, see for example the Gospel of Judas, believed to be a gnostic text, where Jesus is posited as a pneumatic and the other disciples, non-gnostics, as somatics .
A long-running series of stories (begun in the mid-1980s) by Tierney featuring Simon of Gitta, a character based on the Gnostic heresiarch Simon Magus is collected in The Scroll of Thoth (1997). The Biblical figure of Simon Magus is a great figure in the Western mystery tradition. A meticulous researcher, Tierney studied the Roman era and Gnosticism for this series featuring the magician-warrior. Simon of Gitta also features in Tierney's novels The Gardens of Lucullus (with Glenn Rahman) and The Drums of Chaos.
Carl William Hansen (11 October 1872 – 3 August 1936) was a Danish author, Luciferian, Wandering Bishop and Occultist. Hansen was born in Copenhagen and first initiated into Martinism in 1898 by Alphonse Wallen. Hansen published Den Ny Morgens Gry, Lucifer-Hiram, Verdensbygmesterens Genkomst (The Dawn of a New Morning, Lucifer-Hiram, The Return of the World's Master Builder), in 1906 under the pseudonym Ben Kadosh. Inspired by the French Gnostic movement, and such writers as Carl Kohl, his major interests seems to have been alchemy and astrology.
Gates learns Dunkle belongs to the same religious sect as Max Castle. Gates begins to investigate the Orphans, despite their own attempts to stifle his research and the adverse effect that the constant viewing of Orphan-made films is having on his personality. He learns that the Orphans are Gnostic dualists, living in secrecy since the Catholic persecutions of Catharism in the Middle Ages. The Orphans have pioneered revolutionary film techniques, which they subtly employ throughout the film industry by training several generations of film editors.
A more serious split occurred in 1890 around the teaching of F. E. Raven of Greenwich. "The seceders from his communion falsely accused him of denying the orthodox doctrine of the union of the Divine and the human natures in the Man Christ Jesus – not indeed in a Unitarian, but in a Gnostic sense." After furious strife in which the leading opponent was William Lowe, many of the remaining assemblies in Britain stayed with Raven but those on the continent separated whilst the American assemblies were split.
Cerinthus (; fl. c. 50-100 AD) was an early gnostic Christian, who was prominent as a heresiarch in the view of the early Church Fathers.See, in particular, Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, Book I, III and relative External links Contrary to the Church Fathers, he used the Gospel of Cerinthus, and denied that the Supreme God made the physical world. In Cerinthus' interpretation, the Christ descended upon Jesus at baptism and guided him in ministry and the performing of miracles, but left him at the crucifixion.
The history of our didymus organizations in this sphere has been didactic and their gnostic practices will always be a tonic to the polyonymous and idiomorphous ethnical economies. The genesis of the programmed organization will dynamize these policies. Therefore, I sympathize, although not without criticism on one or two themes, with the apostles and the hierarchy of our organs in their zeal to program orthodox economic and numismatic policies, although I have some logomachy with them. I apologize for having tyrannized you with my Hellenic phraseology.
The Mandaean faith is commonly known as the last surviving Gnostic faith and its adherents believe it to be the oldest faith on Earth. John the Baptist, known as Yahia Yuhanna, is considered to have been the final Mandaean prophet and first true Ris'Amma, or Ethnarch, of the Mandaean people. Most Iraqi Mandaeans live near waterways because of the practice of total immersion (or baptism) in flowing water every Sunday. The highest concentrations are in the Mesene province with headquarters in Amarah, Qalat Saleh and Basra.
In the 1960s, academic Rosa del Conte proposed that the text alluded to Babylonian religion, Buddhism, Orphism, Mithraism, and Bogomilism.Cristina Gogâță, "Rosa del Conte, Eminescu or about the Absolute — Establishing Specificity in a European Context", in Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai. Philologia, Vol. 56, Issue 3, September 2011, pp. 14–15 Philologist Anca Voicu also writes that the Gnostic source, a borrowing from the "fall of Sophia" myth (with some echoes from the Book of Proverbs and other orthodox writs), is Poor Dioniss very "narrative matter".
It is highly probable that 1 and 2 Timothy were known and used by Polycarp in his epistle to the Philippians.I.H. Marshall and P.H. Towner, (1999), The Pastoral Epistles (International Critical Commentary; Edinburgh: T&T; Clark), p. 3, Polycarp is known to have died around 155-167, so this would seem to set an upper limit for the dating of the pastoral epistles. Irenaeus explicitly references the epistles to Timothy in his anti-Gnostic treatise Against Heresies, written c. 180 AD.Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.
See references for and against this claim in OrthodoxWiki's Aerial Toll- Houses article; see also Letter From "Archbishop" Lazar for Harakas' and Kalomiros' opinions on the subject. Puhalo claimed that the "toll-house theory" is specifically Gnostic in origin."Two troubling teachings reported", by "Archbishop" Lazar Puhalo. These accusations were later declared to be wrong by the Holy Synod of the Russian Church Abroad, which emphasized that little has been revealed to the Church on this subject, and hence all controversy concerning it should cease.
This was the tradition of Pauline Christianity, which placed importance on the death of Jesus as saving humanity, and described Jesus as God come to Earth. Another major school of thought was Gnostic Christianity, which placed importance on the wisdom of Jesus saving humanity, and described Jesus as a human who became divine through knowledge.The Diversity of Early Christianity While the Jewish Christian church was centered in Jerusalem in the first century, Gentile Christianity became decentralized in the second century.Langan, The Catholic Tradition (1998), pp.
Ehrman 2006, p. 166Bruce Metzger "A Textual Commentary on the New Testament", Second Edition, 1994, German Bible Society The New Testament has been preserved in more than 5,800 fragmentary Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic, Ethiopic and Armenian. Not all biblical manuscripts come from orthodox Christian writers. For example, the Gnostic writings of Valentinus come from the 2nd century AD, and these Christians were regarded as heretics by the mainstream church.Bruce, F.F. (1981). P 14.
Guy Stroumsa's research focuses on the dynamics of encounters between religious traditions and institutions in the Roman Empire and in Late Antiquity, in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. He has studied the crystallization of the Abrahamic traditions in late antiquity, as a background to Islam. He sees Gnosis, Manichaeism and Early Christianity as a unique laboratory for understanding religious transformations in late antiquity. In his doctoral dissertation, Stroumsa studied the development of Gnostic mythology, and demonstrated its roots in Judaism and biblical interpretation.
Theodotus of Byzantium (fl. late 2nd century), a Valentinian Gnostic, was the most prominent exponent of adoptionism.CARM, Adoptionism According to Hippolytus of Rome (Philosophumena, VII, xxiii) Theodotus taught that Jesus was a man born of a virgin, according to the Council of Jerusalem, that he lived like other men, and was most pious. At his baptism in the Jordan the "Christ" came down upon the man Jesus, in the likeness of a dove (Philosophumena, VII, xxiii), but Jesus was not himself God until after his resurrection.
The name comes from the Sanskrit Bodhisattva via Arabic Būdhasaf and Georgian Iodasaph. The only story in which St. Josaphat appears, Barlaam and Josaphat, is based on the life of the Buddha. Josaphat was included in earlier editions of the Roman Martyrology (feast day 27 November)—though not in the Roman Missal—and in the Eastern Orthodox Church liturgical calendar (26 August). In the ancient Gnostic sect of Manichaeism, the Buddha is listed among the prophets who preached the word of God before Mani.
Catharism (; from the Greek: , katharoi, "the pure [ones]"). was a Christian dualist or Gnostic movement between the 12th and 14th centuries which thrived in Southern Europe, particularly what is now northern Italy and southern France. Followers were known as Cathars, or Good Christians, and are now mainly remembered for a prolonged period of persecution by the Catholic Church, which did not recognise their variant Christianity. Catharism arrived in Western Europe in the Languedoc region of France in the 11th century, where their name first appeared.
Aleister Crowley (pictured in 1912), founder of Thelema, was Parsons' spiritual mentor. In January 1939 John and Frances Baxter, a brother and sister who had befriended Jack and Helen Parsons, took Jack to the Church of Thelema on Winona Boulevard, Hollywood, where he witnessed the performance of The Gnostic Mass. Celebrants of the church had included Hollywood actor John Carradine and gay rights activist Harry Hay. Parsons was intrigued, having already heard of Thelema's founder and Outer Head of the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.
Reuss left Germany and moved to London in 1906, and lost control of most of the lodges previously belonging to the O.T.O. network. In 1908, Encausse invited to Reuss to an "International Masonic Conference", where he probably met Joanny Bricaud and was introduced to his Gnostic Catholic Church (E.G.C.), an off-shoot of Jules Doinel's Église Gnostique. Later O.T.O. documents would present the Order being linked to the E.G.C, and subsequently portray the E.G.C. of O.T.O. as being autonomous with respect to Bricaud's organization.
The Knights of Seth were a 19th-century British-German Neo-Sethian group that attempted to resurrect medieval Gnostic and dualistic Christian ideas. While achieving a certain popularity among wealthy young Englishmen in the 1850s, the Knights never gained considerable influence and were by many considered a mere gentlemen's club rather than a religious movement. Apart from a handful of members in Edinburgh and Berlin, the group presently appears to be almost extinct. The group is sometimes referred to by its Latin name Ordo Equester Sethiani.
Stephen Emmel, "A Fragment of Nag Hammadi Codex III in the Beinecke Library: Yale Inv. 1784," Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 17 (1980) 53-60. Emmel’s first major publication was an edition of the Nag Hammadi text “The Dialogue of the Saviour” (1984). At about that same time, he became the first scholar to see the now famous Gnostic scripture titled “The Gospel of Judas,” in what is now called the Codex Tchacos, when it was offered for sale in 1983 in Geneva, Switzerland.
A paperback edition, retitled Forbidden Faith: The Secret History of Gnosticism, appeared in 2007. In this book Smoley traces the history of Gnostic and other esoteric currents of Western civilization — including Manichaeism, Catharism, the Rosicrucian legacy, Freemasonry, Kabbalah, and Theosophy. It also explores how these currents have shaped modern trends and thinkers ranging from William Blake to Jung, and, in more recent times, Philip K. Dick and Harold Bloom. Smoley's book Conscious Love: Insights from Mystical Christianity, was published in April 2008 by Jossey-Bass.
Amos in concert in October 2007 Amos released two more albums with the label, The Beekeeper (2005) and American Doll Posse (2007). Both albums received generally favorable reviews. The Beekeeper was conceptually influenced by the ancient art of beekeeping, which she considered a source of female inspiration and empowerment. Through extensive study, Amos also wove in the stories of the Gnostic gospels and the removal of women from a position of power within the Christian church to create an album based largely on religion and politics.
Jan Valentin Sæther (18 March 1944 – 11 January 2018) was a Norwegian figurative painter, sculptor and gnostic priest.Jan Valentin Sæther er død; religioner.no, 12.1.2018 He was professor of figurative painting at the National Academy of the Arts in Oslo between 1996 and 2002. Sæther received his education from the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry (1963–65) and the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts, painting under the direction of professor Reidar Aulie (1965–66) and sculpture under professor Per Palle Storm (1968–71).
The prime example of this is the phrase it uses that the name of the Father is the Son, which is to be understood in the esoteric manner that the Son is the name, rather than as meaning that Son was a name for the Father. Unlike the canonical gospels, this gospel does not contain an account of Jesus' life or teaching. It does contain insights concerning the resurrected Jesus' 40-day ministry. This gospel, like some other gnostic texts, can be interpreted as proclaiming predestination.
Layton printed eight fragments of Valentinian literature, each being a quote which at least one of the Church Fathers claimed to take from the Valentinian corpus although none from the "Gospel of Truth". Layton further noted where the excerpts agree with one another. "Fragment G", which Clement of Alexandria (Stromateis 6.52.3-4) related to "On Friends", asserts that there is shared matter between Gnostic Christian material, and material found in "publicly available books"; which is the result of "the law that is written in the [human] heart".
The Catholic Church and other Christian denominations suggest that Jesus' death was necessary to take away the collective sin of the human race. The crucifixion is seen as an example of Christ's eternal love for mankind and as a self-sacrifice on the part of God for humanity.Book of Concord, "The Three Ecumenical or Universal Creeds," The Book of Concord Website, n.d. The Gnostic Gospel of Judas contends that Jesus commanded Judas Iscariot to set in motion the chain of events that would lead to his death.
Sacerdotal ordinands must hold at least the K.E.W. degree of O.T.O., a degree only available by invitation. The Priesthood is responsible for administering the sacraments through the Gnostic Mass and other ceremonies as authorized by their supervising Bishops. The Priesthood is supervised and instructed by the Episcopate, or Bishops. Full initiation to the Seventh Degree of O.T.O. includes episcopal consecration in E.G.C. The Tenth Degree Supreme and Holy King serves as the Primate or chief Bishop for any country in which O.T.O. has organized a Grand Lodge.
The Secret Book of John, also called the Apocryphon of John or the Secret Revelation of John, is a 2nd-century Sethian Gnostic Christian text of secret teachings. Since it was known to Irenaeus, a Church Father, it must have been written before around 180 CE. It describes Jesus appearing and giving secret knowledge (gnosis) to John the Apostle. The author describes it having occurred after Jesus "has gone back to the place from which he came". The book is reputed to bear that revelation.
The exact meaning of many of the words used in the debates at Nicaea were still unclear to speakers of other languages. Greek words like "essence" (ousia), "substance" (hypostasis), "nature" (physis), "person" (prosopon) bore a variety of meanings drawn from pre-Christian philosophers, which could not but entail misunderstandings until they were cleared up. The word homoousia, in particular, was initially disliked by many bishops because of its associations with Gnostic heretics (who used it in their theology), and because their heresies had been condemned at the 264–268 Synods of Antioch.
Back on the raft, Krag tells Maskull that he (Maskull) is Nightspore; then Maskull dies. ; 21 – Muspel Krag and Nightspore arrive at Muspel, where there is a tower similar to that in Starkness (the observatory in Scotland). From the windows of its several stories Nightspore sees that Shaping (the Gnostic demiurge) uses what comes from Muspel to create the world in order that he may feel joy, fragmenting the Muspel matter in the process and producing suffering for all living things. Krag acknowledges that he is Surtur and is known on Earth as pain.
Urban (2006) p. 36 note 68 Modern sexual magic began with Paschal Beverly Randolph.Urban (2006) p. 36 The connection to Gnosticism came by way of the French Gnostic Church with its close ties to the strong esoteric current in France, being part of the same highly interconnected milieu of esoteric societies and orders from which the most influential of sexual magic orders arose, the Ordo Templi Orientis (Order of Oriental Templars, OTO). Theodor Reuss founded the OTO as an umbrella occult organization with sexual magic at its core.Greer (2003) p.
In the 1950s, Eric Voegelin entered into an academic debate concerning the classification of modernity following Karl Löwith's 1949 Meaning in History: the Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History; and Jacob Taubes's 1947 Abendländishe Eschatologie. In this context, Voegelin put forward his "gnosticism thesis": criticizing modernity by identifying an "immanentist eschatology" as the "gnostic nature" of modernity. Differing with Löwith, he did not criticize eschatology as such, but rather the immanentization which he described as a "pneumopathological" deformation. Voegelin's gnosticism thesis became popular in neo-conservative and cold war political thought.
Excavations were carried out in 1894, during which the ramparts were cleared. The west tower of the south gate was found to contain a hoard of jewellery, which included an enamelled brooch shaped as a hare, a gilded bronze brooch described as a masterpiece of Celtic art, a silver collar with a pendant, a gold ring and a bronze ring with a Gnostic gem. During this excavation the headquarters building (principia) was partially uncovered, together with its vaulted underground strong room. A barrack block was also found to the south-west of the principia.
Infernus is a theistic Satanist and as the founding member of Gorgoroth, has built the band on his philosophy and religion, proclaiming himself as 'Satan's Minister on Earth'. When asked in March 2009 about what he specifically practiced, he described it as a Gnostic form of Satanism. In an interview conducted in March 2009 following the conclusion of the Gorgoroth name dispute with former colleagues Gaahl and King ov Hell, he explicitly reaffirmed that he was 'the ideological backbone of Gorgoroth'.Infernus (Gorgoroth): Nu-mi pasa de Gaahl - METALHEAD.
Participants over the years have included Heinrich Zimmer (Indian religious art), Karl Kerényi (Greek mythology), Mircea Eliade (history of religions), Carl Gustav Jung and Erich Neumann (analytical psychology), Alfons Rosenberg (symbolism), Gilles Quispel (gnostic studies), Gershom Scholem (Jewish mysticism), Henry Corbin (Islamic religion), Gilbert Durand (symbolic anthropology), Adolf Portmann (biology), Herbert Read (art history), Max Knoll (physics), and Joseph Campbell (comparative mythology).Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism The Eranos conferences have resulted in the publication of a number of books. Anyone may attend the lectures upon payment of a small fee.
The state of gnosis "is impossible without ample and close self-identification of ourselves with all existence" (p.558). To "learn how to be one self with all" is key, "without it there is no gnosis" (p.559). Gnosis changes "all our view and experience of our soul-life and of the world around us" as it is "the decisive transition in the Yoga" (p.542). Yet we must "remember that the gnostic level... is not the supreme plane of our consciousness but a middle or link plane" (p.553).
Besides these chapbooks, Finlay's "creative fury" was channeled into two essay collections. The first was a project tracing the Gnostic spirit present in the works of modern writers, using Yvor Winters, Flaubert, Valéry, Newman, Hopkins, Freud, Nietszche, and Kafka as examples. Following the line of argument in the essay “Mere Literature and the Lost Traveller” by Allen Tate, Finlay argued in these essays that, like the world of the third-century Gnostics, the mind of the modern writer was a world from which the living God was absent—deus absconditus.
The second was collection of essays on a spirit similar to, perhaps even identical with, the Gnostic spirit, a spirit he found in the works of certain ancient Greek philosophers. Finlay lived to complete two of these essays—“The Night of Alcibiades” and “The Socratics and the Flight from This World.” He left behind a partial draft of a third essay, untitled, on Plato’s Crito.“With Constant Light”: The Collected Essays and Reviews, with Selections from the Diaries, Letters, and Other Prose of John Martin Finlay (1941–1991).
Carl A. P. Ruck of Boston University.Allegro, John M. (2009) The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, 40th anniversary edition, Gnostic Media, . A more articulate exposition of Allegro's insights into early Christianity and his discoveries studying the Dead Sea Scrolls was published in his 1979 book The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth. The work of Allegro also gained recognition and consideration by such late proponents of experiential psychedelia through pharmacological interaction as Terence McKenna, who cited Allegro's claims of certain psychoactive fungi analogizing the Eucharist, spoken in a live lecture in the 1990s.
The Martinist Order was to become a primary focus for Encausse, and continues today as one of his most enduring legacies. ;1893-1895 Bishop of l'Église Gnostique de France In 1893, Encausse was consecrated a bishop of l'Église Gnostique de France by Jules Doinel, who had founded this Church as an attempt to revive the Cathar religion in 1890. In 1895, Doinel abdicated as Primate of the French Gnostic Church, leaving control of the Church to a synod of three of his former bishops, one of whom was Encausse.
The origins of Gnosticism are obscure and still disputed. The proto-orthodox Christian groups called Gnostics a heresy of Christianity, but according to the modern scholars the theology's origin is closely related to Jewish sectarian milieus and early Christian sects. Scholars debate Gnosticism's origins as having roots in Neoplatonism and Buddhism, due to similarities in beliefs, but ultimately, its origins are currently unknown. As Christianity developed and became more popular, so did Gnosticism, with both proto-orthodox Christian and Gnostic Christian groups often existing in the same places.
Scholem detected Jewish gnosis in the imagery of the merkavah, which can also be found in "Christian" Gnostic documents, for example the being "caught away" to the third heaven mentioned by Paul the Apostle. Quispel sees Gnosticism as an independent Jewish development, tracing its origins to Alexandrian Jews, to which group Valentinus was also connected. Many of the Nag Hammadi texts make reference to Judaism, in some cases with a violent rejection of the Jewish God. Gershom Scholem once described Gnosticism as "the Greatest case of metaphysical anti- Semitism".
Jewish Gnosticism with a focus on Sophia was active by 90 AD. Sophia, emanating without her partner, resulted in the production of the Demiurge (Greek: lit. "public builder"), who is also referred to as Yaldabaoth and variations thereof in some Gnostic texts. This creature is concealed outside the pleroma; in isolation, and thinking itself alone, it creates materiality and a host of co-actors, referred to as archons. The demiurge is responsible for the creation of mankind; trapping elements of the pleroma stolen from Sophia inside human bodies.
The Gnostic movements may contain information about the historical Jesus, since some texts preserve sayings which show similarities with canonical sayings. Especially the Gospel of Thomas has a significant amount of parallel sayings. Yet, a striking difference is that the canonical sayings center on the coming endtime, while the Thomas-sayings center on a kingdom of heaven that is already here, and not a future event. According to Helmut Koester, this is because the Thomas-sayings are older, implying that in the earliest forms of Christianity Jesus was regarded as a wisdom-teacher.
Pages from the Gospel of Thomas, discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945. Gnosticism (from , , "having knowledge") is a collection of religious ideas and systems which originated in the first century AD among early Christian and Jewish sects. These various groups emphasised personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) over the orthodox teachings, traditions, and authority of the church. Viewing material existence as flawed or evil, Gnostic cosmogony generally presents a distinction between a supreme, hidden God and a malevolent lesser divinity (sometimes associated with the Yahweh of the Old Testament) who is responsible for creating the material universe.
En studie over forholdet mellem enhed og mangfoldighed under udviklingen af det ægyptiske gudsbegreb (Amon-Re: A Study of the Relationship between Unity and Diversity during the Development of the Egyptian Concept of God). At the university, Schencke lectured on topics such as Judaism, Hellenism, the Quran, Egyptian religion, Luqman's fables, primitive religion, Pistis Sophia (a Gnostic text), and the Parsis in Europe. In addition, he taught Arabic grammar, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Most of his lectures had a small number of students, but lectures on more popular topics could have as many as 250 listeners.
North's work was reviewed by T.A. Shippey of Saint Louis University for The Modern Language Review. Taking a critical approach to the book, Shippey was of the opinion that the author's arguments relied "very heavily on assumptions about the precise (one might say gnostic) meanings of sometimes rather common words." He argues that many will not accept some of North's "more complex arguments" and that North's interpretation of Deor, 11. 14-6, via Hdvamdl, stanzas 96-102 as a political satire on Æthelwulf of Wessex was "especially strained".
Among certain Gnostic sects, Amen became the name of an angel. In Isaiah 65:16, the authorized version has "the God of truth" ("the God of amen" in Hebrew). Jesus often used amen to put emphasis to his own words (translated: "verily" or "truly"). In John's Gospel, it is repeated, "Verily, verily" (or "Truly, truly"). Amen is also used in oaths (Numbers 5:22; Deuteronomy 27:15–26; Nehemiah 5:13; 8:6; 1 Chronicles 16:36) and is further found at the end of the prayer of primitive churches (1 Corinthians 14:16).
Among the named philosophers quoted in Coptic are Anacharsis, Diogenes and Plato. A translation of an excerpt from Plato's Republic (588A–589B) has been found in the Nag Hammadi library, but it is a poor translation, extensively reworked to better conform with Gnostic teaching. Many leaves of a Coptic manuscript consisting of philosophical texts, fables with Christian interpretations and explicitly Christian texts survive dispersed between libraries in Vienna and London. The manuscript was probably compiled in Akhmim, a centre of Greek learning into the 6th century and also a late redoubt of Egyptian paganism.
There were those who rejected the Gospel of John (and possibly also Revelation and the Epistles of John) as either not apostolic or as written by the Gnostic Cerinthus or as not compatible with the Synoptic Gospels. Epiphanius of Salamis called these people the Alogi, because they rejected the Logos doctrine of John and because he claimed they were illogical. There may have also been a dispute over the doctrine of the Paraclete. Gaius or Caius, presbyter of Rome (early 3rd century), was apparently associated with this movement.
He subsequently joined Crowley's Thelemite order, the A∴A∴, and the Thelemite wing of the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.). In 1915, he joined the O.T.O.'s British Columbia Lodge No. 1, based in Vancouver, and rose to become one of its senior members. In 1922 Smith moved to Los Angeles in the United States, where he, Jane Wolfe, and Regina Kahl tried to establish a new Thelemite community. They founded an incorporated Church of Thelema which gave weekly public performances of the Gnostic Mass from their home in Hollywood.
Grady McMurtry was an early Lodge member. He later became head of the O.T.O.. With the O.T.O. now being revived in North America, Smith founded the Agape Lodge No. 1, based at his Hollywood home, and brought in 7 initiates to the Minerval level in September 1935. He advertised the foundation of his group through an advert in American Astrology magazine and printed a pamphlet explaining what the O.T.O. was. The Agape Lodge held regular meetings, lectures, and study classes, as well as social events and a weekly Gnostic Mass open to the public.
Now renting a house, Smith sought out various handyman jobs, when he learned that Crowley had died and been succeeded as OHO of the O.T.O. by Germer. He became good friends with the art dealer Baron Ernst von Harringa, who commissioned Smith to construct Asian-style furniture for his gallery. Smith's own health was deteriorating, and in 1948 he suffered from a number of mild heart attacks. He nevertheless continued to believe in Thelema, and hoped to revive the Church of Thelema through performing the Gnostic Mass once more.
In Christian scripture, the Holy Spirit is represented by a dove—a ubiquitous symbol of goddess religions, also found on Hebrew naos shrines. This speculation is not widely accepted. In the non-canon Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is depicted saying, "Whoever knows the Father and the Mother will be called the child of a whore." Goddess symbology nevertheless persists in Christian iconography; Israel Morrow notes that while Christian art typically displays female angels with avian wings, the only biblical reference to such figures comes through Zechariah's vision of pagan goddesses.
During this time, he was also a scientific researcher for the Dutch Research Organization ZWO (now NWO), and editor of an educational review. In 1987 van Oort was appointed as Senior Research Fellow of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW) for research into Augustine and the sources of his theology. In 1992, he was appointed as senior lecturer in Church History and History of Christian Doctrine at Utrecht University. In 1999, van Oort was named as extraordinary professor in Gnostic Studies at Nijmegen, where he became ordinary professor in 2000.
He that seeks will not rest till he finds; and he that has found shall marvel; and he that has marveled shall reign; and he that has reigned shall rest. (Clement, Stromateis 5.14.96.3) : Fragment 4 is a "chain-saying", seek–find–marvel–reign–rest, describing the steps towards salvation, where "rest" equals the state of salvation. The saying is similar to themes found in Jewish Wisdom literature, and the similarity to a saying in the Gospel of Thomas suggests that the text may have been influenced by gnostic Wisdom teaching. 5\.
Parts of the text in Daniel are Aramaic and may have been changed in translation. The Septuagint reads that the son of man came as the Ancient of Days. All other translations say the son of man gained access to the Ancient of Days and was brought before that one. The identification of Metatron with the gnostic 3 Enoch, where the name first appears, is not explicitly made in the Talmud although it does refer to a Prince of the World who was young but now is old.
A lion-faced deity found on a Gnostic gem in Bernard de Montfaucon's L'antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures may be a depiction of the Demiurge, Samael. In the Apocryphon of John, On the Origin of the World, and Hypostasis of the Archons, found in the Nag Hammadi library, Samael is one of three names of the demiurge, whose other names are Yaldabaoth and Saklas. After Yaldabaoth claims sole divinity for himself, the voice of Sophia comes forth calling him Samael, due to his ignorance.Gilhus, Ingvild Sælid. 1985.
Those who think the letter is a forgery mostly think it is a modern forgery, with its discoverer, Morton Smith, being the most often denounced perpetrator. If the letter is a modern forgery, the excerpts from the Secret Gospel of Mark would also be forgeries. Some accept the letter as genuine but do not believe in Clement's account, and instead argue that the gospel is a second century (gnostic) pastiche. Others think Clement's information is accurate and that the secret gospel is a second edition of the Gospel of Mark expanded by Mark himself.
Ibn Arabi (Murcia July 28, 1165 – Damascus November 10, 1240) Diagram of "Plain of Assembly" (Ard al-Hashr) on the Day of Judgment, from autograph manuscript of Futuhat al-Makkiyya, ca. 1238 (photo: after Futuhat al-Makkiyya, Cairo edition, 1911) Akbariyya is a branch of Sufi metaphysics based on the teachings of Ibn Arabi, an Andalusian Sufi who was a gnostic and philosopher. The word is derived from Ibn Arabi's nickname, "Shaykh al-Akbar," meaning "the greatest shaykh." Akbariyya has never been used to indicate a specific Sufi group or society.
A debate has formed around the dating of the Gospel of Thomas. In order for Crossan’s theory to be possible, an earlier dating for the Gospel of Thomas is necessary in order to be written prior to the Synoptic Gospels, like the Q source. Some scholars suggest that due to the Gnostic content, Thomas was compiled in the 2nd Century, one century after the Synoptic Gospels. These scholars believe that the author of Thomas incorporated the Synoptic texts after their circulation began and therefore, Thomas could not have been connected to the Q source.
An analysis of the Chaldean Oracles demonstrates an inspiration for contemporary gnostic teachings: fiery emanations initiate from the transcendental First Paternal Intellect, from whom the Second Intellect, the Demiurge comprehends the cosmos as well as himself. Within the First Intellect, a female Power, designated Hecate, is, like Sophia, the mediating World-Soul. At the base of all exists created Matter, made by the Demiurgic Intellect. The matter farthest from the Highest God (First Father / Intellect) was considered a dense shell from which the enlightened soul must emerge, shedding its bodily garments.
He was born in Nancy into a military family, and took part in several expeditions in China serving in military and administrative capacities. He was a follower of the Christian mystical system Martinism, and was consecrated bishop in the (French Gnostic Church) taking the name of Tau Simon. His long periods of living in Tonkin and other provinces enabled him to understand Chinese thought. Under the influence of a Taoist master, he was initiated into a Chinese secret society, and adopted the name "Matgioi" (which means "eye of the day").
Here, as part of an alphabet, we read that "Proud Korah's troop was swallowed up" which is a paraphrasing of . Korah is also mentioned by Irenaeus of Lyons in his anti- Gnostic work Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies), written in about 180. He criticized the excuse that some evil people in the Bible were credited with obtaining their power from God. Specifically he wrote there are some who: :declare that Cain derived his being from the Power above, and acknowledge that Esau, Korah, the Sodomites, and all such persons, are related to themselves.
A neo-Nazi esoteric Nazi Gnostic sect headquartered in Vienna, Austria, called the Tempelhofgesellschaft, founded in the early 1990s, teaches what it calls a form of Marcionism. They distribute pamphlets claiming that the Aryan race originally came to Atlantis from the star Aldebaran (this information is supposedly based on "ancient Sumerian manuscripts"). They maintain that the Aryans from Aldebaran derive their power from the vril energy of the Black Sun. They teach that since the Aryan race is of extraterrestrial origin it has a divine mission to dominate all the other races.
Celsus seems to have read at least one work by one of the second-century Christian apologists, possibly Justin Martyr or Aristides of Athens. From this reading, Celsus seems to have known which kinds of arguments Christians would be most vulnerable to. He also mentions the Ophites and Simonians, two Gnostic sects that had almost completely vanished by Origen's time. One of Celsus's main sources for Books I–II of The True Word was an earlier anti-Christian polemic written by an unknown Jewish author, whom Origen refers to as the "Jew of Celsus".
Catharism was a religious movement with dualistic and Gnostic elements that appeared in the Languedoc region of France around the middle of the 12th century. Cathars were dualist in their beliefs, and the Catholic symbol of the crucifix was, to the Cathars, a negative symbol. In the words of one 14th century Cathar Perfect Pierre Authié: > ...just as a man should with an axe break the gallows on which his father > was hanged, so you ought to try and break crucifixes, because Christ was > suspended from it, albeit only in seeming.
The response of fundamentalist Protestants and traditional Catholics to the book was more critical. "The thesis of Stealing Jesus is an antinomian heresy rooted in gnostic dualism about the flesh and spirit", pronounced Catholic priest George W. Rutler in National Review, suggesting that "Bawer could some day write something about the real Church, if he read St. Francis de Sales's Treatise on the Love of God, spent a few days in Lourdes, and quieted down with a good cigar." Stealing Jesus was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in the category of Spirituality/Religion.
"Five Trees" in Paradise is a mysterious allegory or concept from famous Coptic Gospel of Thomas NHC 2: (gnostic library from Nag Hammadi in Egypt) 19th saying/logia of Jesus and other sources of religious mythology. Blatz Translation: > (19) Jesus said: Blessed is he who was before he came into being. If you > become disciples to me (and) listen to my words, these stones will minister > to you. For you have five trees in Paradise which do not change, either in > summer or in winter, and their leaves do not fall.
O.T.O. was registered with the State of California on December 28, 1971 as a legal organization. In 1974 McMurtry and Seckler separated, and he moved to Berkeley, California. Germer's widow died in 1975, and in 1976 the surviving members of O.T.O. were enabled by court order to claim the still considerable archives. In October 1977 McMurtry founded Thelema Lodge in Berkeley to serve as the headquarters of his resuscitated O.T.O. Many initiations were performed, and a weekly celebration of the Gnostic Mass was soon established in the San Francisco Bay area.
In addition to his writings on Christian origins and the Gnostic Gospels, Perrin has authored a number of popular lay introductions to works such as the Gospel of Judas and Gospel of Thomas. In 2007 Lost in Transmission was published as a response to Bart Ehrman's popular Misquoting Jesus dealing with issues of textual criticism of the New Testament. In 2008 Perrin delivered a public lecture on the historical Jesus at the University of Georgia. Perrin was announced as the 16th president of Trinity International University in 2019, succeeding David Dockery.
Bloom explained: "I am using Gnostic in a very broad way. I am nothing if not Jewish... I really am a product of Yiddish culture. But I can't understand a Yahweh, or a God, who could be all-powerful and all knowing and would allow the Nazi death camps and schizophrenia." Influenced by his reading, he began a series of books that focused on the way in which poets struggled to create their own individual poetic visions without being overcome by the influence of the previous poets who inspired them to write.
Druze man in Peki'in Israel is home to about 143,000 Druze who follow their own gnostic religion. Self described as "Ahl al- Tawhid", and "al-Muwaḥḥidūn" (meaning "People of Oneness", and "Unitarians", respectively), the Druze live mainly in the Northern District, southern Haifa District, and northern occupied Golan Heights.Identity Repertoires among Arabs in Israel, Muhammad Amara and Izhak Schnell; Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol. 30, 2004 Since 1957, the Israeli government has also designated the Druze a distinct ethnic community, at the request of the community's leaders.
The hymn is commonly interpreted as a Gnostic view of the human condition, that we are spirits lost in a world of matter and forgetful of our true origin. This state of affairs may be ameliorated by a revelatory message delivered by a messenger, a role generally ascribed to Jesus. The letter thus takes on a symbolic representation of gnosis. The hymn has been preserved and especially treasured in Manichaeism - a version of it appears as part of a Coptic Manichaean psalm book and is called the Psalms of Thomas.
Among 738 Jews in Israel 9.8% were found to be G. The G2a (P15+) types were in the majority, with G2b (formerly G2c) being the next most common type. Among the Gnostic Druze, G was found in 4% of 37 samples on the Golan Heights; in 14% of 183 samples in the Galilee; and in 12% of 35 samples in the Carmel. Another study which sampled 20 Druze men apparently living in Israel, none had the G mutation. Among Palestinians apparently living in Israel, 75% of 20 samples were found to be G2a (P15+).
He grew up in Penarth, south Wales and attended the University College of Wales, Swansea. He has also lived in London and then in rural California and now lives in Cadoxton, Vale of Glamorgan with his wife. He also runs the Bardic Press, publishers of Hafiz, Omar Khayyam, Early Christianity, Celtic Mythology, Fourth Way , is the editor of the magazine The Gnostic: A Journal of Gnosticism, Western Esotericism and Spirituality . He has been interviewed several times about his writing, by Fortean Times in March 2010, by Zany Mystic, by Spinx Radio.
Much of the official organizing of the ecclesiastical structure was done by the bishops of the church. This tradition of clarification can be seen as established by the Apostolic Fathers, who were bishops themselves. The Catholic Encyclopedia argues that although evidence is scarce in the second century, the primacy of the Church of Rome is asserted by Irenaeus of Lyons' document Against Heresies (AD 189).Catholic Encyclopedia: The Pope In response to second century Gnostic teaching, Irenaeus created the first known document considered to be describing apostolic succession,Langan, The Catholic Tradition (1998), p.
He outlined three forms of sex magick—the autoerotic, homosexual, and heterosexual—and argued that such acts could be used to focus the magician's will onto a specific goal such as financial gain or personal creative success. For Crowley, sex was treated as a sacrament, with the consumption of sexual fluids interpreted as a Eucharist. This was often manifested as the Cakes of Light, a biscuit containing either menstrual blood or a mixture of semen and vaginal fluids. The Gnostic Mass is the central religious ceremony within Thelema.
After his excommunication, he returned to Asia Minor, where he continued to lead his many church congregations and teach the Gospel of Marcion. According to Christian sources, Marcion's teacher was the Simonian Cerdo. Irenaeus writes that "a certain Cerdo, originating from the Simonians, came to Rome under Hyginus ... and taught that the one who was proclaimed as God by the Law and the Prophets is not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Against Heresies, 1, 27, 1). Also, still according to them, Marcion and the Gnostic Valentinus were companions in Rome.
Most are ambiguous in nature, although St. John Chrysostom, in the 4th century, seems to use the term arsenokoitai to refer to pederasty common in the Greco-Roman culture of the time, and Patriarch John IV of Constantinople in the 6th century used it to refer to anal sex: "some men even commit the sin of arsenokoitai with their wives" (Townsley 2003). Moreover, Hippolytus of Rome in his Refutation of all Heresies describes a Gnostic teaching, according to which an evil angel Naas committed adultery with Eve and arsenokoitēs with Adam.Hippolytus. Refutation of all Heresies.
Jack Parsons in 1938 In 1939, the group initiated Jack Parsons, a jet fuel engineer, and his wife Helen Parsons, who had become interested in the O.T.O. through attending the Gnostic Mass. Smith wrote to Crowley that Parsons was "a really excellent man ... He has an excellent mind and much better intellect than myself ... JP is going to be very valuable". The Parsons would help bring new members into the group Grady McMurtry and his fiancée Claire Palmer, and Helen's sister Sara Northrup. Grady McMurtry was an early Lodge member.
Anthony Nuttall argues Shakespeare's work defies identification of precise religious influences because Shakespeare's ranging and restless mind played with many ideas, alternately promoting and challenging assumptions throughout the plays; in Measure for Measure, Nuttall finds evidence of experimentation with heretical Gnostic theology. However, Eamon Duffy points out that although the majority of Tudor people were muddled and uncertain, accepting of compromise and accommodation, "Religious diversity was not a notion to conjure with in Tudor England. …Ritual and doctrinal diversity were evils, aspects of social and religious disunity."Duffy, Eamon (1996).
In many Gnostic systems, various emanations of "God" are known by such names as One, Monad, Aion teleos (αἰών τέλεος "The Broadest Aeon"), Bythos (, "depth" or "profundity"), Proarkhe ("before the beginning", ), Arkhe ("the beginning", ), and Aeons. In different systems these emanations are differently named, classified, and described, but emanation theory is common to all forms of Gnosticism. In Basilidian Gnosis they are called sonships (υἱότητες huiotetes; sing.: υἱότης huiotes); according to Marcus, they are numbers and sounds; in Valentinianism they form male/female pairs called syzygies (Greek , from σύζυγοι syzygoi, lit.
It may well be believed that in the language of the Gnostic sects, the "pneumatici" are "spiritual men who have attained to the perfect knowledge of God, and been initiated into these mysteries by Achamoth" herself (Adv. Haer. I. 6, 1), ordinary Christians being branded as "psychici." Such was also the use made of the latter word by Tertullian, who in his latest works, written after his Montanism had involved him in complete separation from the church, habitually uses the word Psychici to designate those from whom he had separated.
It was discovered in the eighteenth century in a large volume containing numerous early Gnostic treatises. The document takes the form of a long dialogue in which Jesus answers his followers' questions. Of the sixty-four questions, thirty-nine are presented by a woman who is referred to as Mary or Mary Magdalene. At one point, Jesus says, "Mary, thou blessed one, whom I will perfect in all mysteries of those of the height, discourse in openness, thou, whose heart is raised to the kingdom of heaven more than all thy brethren".
Lady Gaga's song "Judas" (2011) is sung from Mary's perspective, portraying her as a prostitute who is "beyond repentance". The 2018 film Mary Magdalene, starring Rooney Mara as the eponymous character, sought to reverse the centuries-old portrayal of Mary Magdalene as a repentant prostitute, while also combating the conspiracy claims of her being Jesus's wife or sexual partner. Instead, the film portrays her as Jesus's closest disciple and the only one who truly understands his teachings. This portrayal is partially based on the Gnostic Gospel of Mary Magdalene.
Bradshaw is unusual as a private eye protagonist, an ordinary man who was once a police officer. All the books have the word "Saratoga" in the title. In the comic novel The Wrestler's Cruel Study, the protagonist roams through a modern cityscape governed by fairy-tale rituals, searching for his missing fiancée. He is alternately aided or hindered by a Friedrich Nietzsche -quoting manager and his Hegelian nemesis, to find that his wrestling matches are choreographed by a shadowy organization that enacts their various Gnostic theological debates through the pageantry and panoply of the ring.
According to Mandaean mythology, Ruha Qadishta fell apart from the "world of light" and gave birth to the devil,Persistence of Primitive Beliefs in Theology: A Study in Syrian Syncretism; 'Ali, Elyun, El, Helios and Elijah. F. W. Bussell called "Lord of Darkness" (malka dhshuka)Willis Barnstone, Marvin Meyer The Gnostic Bible: Revised and Expanded Edition Shambhala Publications 2009 p. 552 or Ur. According to one tradition, Ur is an androgyne lion-headed dragon with the wings of an eagle. Together they create several evil demons, liliths and vampires.
During her short life she showed an especial interest for ancient paintings and classical poetry, acquiring the Liber Interitus by Horace for an unknown but extremely high price. She was inspired by Gnostic writings to write a short poet entitled Chuchotet d'Archont, published posthumously. Along with her husband she was the founding patron of L'Istituto Statale della Ss. Annunziata, the first female boarding school in Florence set up to educate aristocratic and noble young ladies. She died in Italy of tuberculosis she passed onto Auguste, her only surviving daughter.
204 – 270 AD) was a major philosopher of the ancient world who is widely considered the founder of Neo-Platonism (along with his teacher Ammonius Saccas). His metaphysical writings have inspired centuries of Pagan, Christian, Jewish, Islamic and Gnostic metaphysicians and mystics. About 150 years later, Saint Augustine (354-430 AD) was heavily influenced by the teaching of Plotinus. As one of the most important figures in the development of Western Christianity, St. Augustine strongly endorsed asceticism, which meant self-denial of worldly pleasure and total sexual abstinence.
They claimed kinship with those to whom he showed antagonism in the Old Testament but believed he was the weaker power and could do them no permanent harm, since they enjoyed the protection of Sophia. They presumably shared a Gnostic belief in the division of mankind into two classes: the spiritual and the material. Material people belonged to the realm of the Creator and derived their being from him but were doomed to destruction. Spiritual men were imprisoned in bodies of flesh but derived their essential being from the highest Power.
The initial translation of the Gospel of Judas was widely publicized but simply confirmed the account that was written in Irenaeus and known Gnostic beliefs, leading some scholars to simply summarize the discovery as nothing new. It is also argued that a closer reading of the existent text, as presented in October 2006, shows Christianity in a new light. According to Elaine Pagels, for instance, Judas is portrayed as having a mission to hand Jesus over to the soldiers. She says that Bible translators have mistranslated the Greek word for "handing over" to "betrayal".
Its highlight was a mystical and occult interpretation of the runic alphabet, which became the cornerstone of his ideology. Although the article was rejected by the academy, it would later be expanded by List and grew into his final masterpiece, a comprehensive treatment of his linguistic and historical theories published in 1914 as Die Ursprache der Ario-Germanen und ihre Mysteriensprache (The Proto-Language of the Aryo-Germanics and their Mystery Language). List's doctrine has been described as gnostic, pantheist and deist. At its core is the mystical union of God, man and nature.
Gastroliths (Gizzard Stones) in various shapes and sizes Aaskouandy is a gnostic symbol taken from Native American beliefs, especially Iroquois folklore. In folklore traditions the symbol functions as a magical charm which both protects and can potentially harm the wearer. Because of the dangers associated with the charm, its owner is required to maintain a good relationship with the object by providing offerings and care. It is described as an object which appears unexpected (location and/or shape) and which is inscribed with powers usually connected to its unexpected nature.
The apocryphal Gospel of Barnabas (the known manuscripts dated to the late 16th or early 17th centuries), also promotes a non-death narrative. The work claims itself to be by the biblical Barnabas, who in this work is one of the twelve apostles; however, text of this Gospel is late and pseudepigraphical. Nonetheless, some scholars suggest that it may contain some remnants of an earlier, apocryphal work (perhaps Gnostic, Ebionite, or Diatessaronic), redacted to bring it more in line with Islamic doctrine. Some Muslims consider the surviving versions as transmitting a suppressed apostolic original.
1200), the Paterini, who practiced a form of gnostic manicheanism, first appear in Viterbo. Pope Innocent III came to Viterbo personally in June 1207, and engaged in the search for Paterini and their sympathizers, most of whom had fled. (reprint of 1941 edition) They were active, however, throughout the 13th century, and were still found there in 1304. In the fourteenth century the clergy of Toscanella repeatedly refused to recognize the bishop elected by the chapter of Viterbo, so that Pope Clement V (1312) reserved to the Holy See the right of appointment.
For instance, Judas's betrayal is seen as setting in motion the events that led to Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection, which, according to traditional Christian theology, brought salvation to humanity. The Gnostic Gospel of Judas—rejected by the proto-orthodox Church as heretical—portrays Judas's actions as done in obedience to instructions given to him by Jesus, and that he alone amongst the disciples knew Jesus's true teachings. Since the Middle Ages, Judas has sometimes been portrayed as a personification of the Jewish people and his betrayal has been used to justify Christian antisemitism.
Pearson, Joanne. A Popular Dictionary of Paganism, p. 44. Routledge, 2002. He recommended a number of these practices to his followers, including basic yoga; (asana and pranayama);Orpheus, pp. 9–16, 45–52 rituals of his own devising or based on those of the Golden Dawn, such as the Lesser ritual of the pentagram, for banishing and invocation; Liber Samekh, a ritual for the invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; eucharistic rituals such as The Gnostic Mass and The Mass of the Phoenix; and Liber Resh, consisting of four daily adorations to the sun.
Evidently from works such as the Apocryphon of John, the Ophite Diagrams, On the Origin of the World and Pistis Sophia, archons play an important role in Gnostic cosmology. Probably originally referring to the Greek daimons of the planets, in Gnosticism they became the demonic rulers of the material world, each associated with a different celestial sphere. As rulers over the material world, they are called ἄρχοντες (, "principalities", or "rulers"). As with ancient astronomy, which thought of a sphere of fixed stars, above the spheres of the seven planets,Clem. Alex.
The Manicheans readily adopted the Gnostic usage, and their archons are invariably evil beings, who make up the Prince of Darkness. It is related how the helper of the Primal Man, the spirit of life, captured the evil archons, and fastened them to the firmament, or according to another account, flayed them, and formed the firmament from their skin,F. C. Baur, Das manichäische Religionssystem, v. 65 and this conception is closely related to the other, though in this tradition the number (seven) of the archons is lost.
This confusion, however, was suggested by the very fact that at least five of the seven archons bore Old-Testament names for God—El Shaddai, Adonai, Elohim, Jehovah, Sabaoth. Wilhelm Anz has also pointed out that Gnostic eschatology, consisting in the soul's struggle with hostile archons in its attempt to reach the Pleroma, is a close parallel of the soul's ascent, in Babylonian astrology, through the realms of the seven planets to Anu. The late Babylonian religion can definitely be indicated as the home of these ideas.Zimmern, Keilinschriften in dem alien Testament, ii. p.
Yamauchi has written several books and essays on ancient gnosticism. He has been highly critical of scholars, such as Rudolf Bultmann, who have used third and fourth century AD Gnostic texts as primary evidence for the existence of pre-Christian gnosticism. In the 1970s he was a prominent critic of the late Morton Smith's interpretation of an apocryphal text known as the Secret Gospel of Mark. Yamauchi revisited the corpus of Smith's writings on the topics of the lost gospels and Jesus as a magician-healer in his lengthy essay on magic and miracles (1986).
The Johannite church was located in a former bottle shop in the Cour des miracles, dubbed the "Apostolic Court of the Temple". The Order dated its documents from 'Magistropolis', a mystical calendar commencing from the foundation of the Knights Templar in 1118.Partner, page 148. In 1831, following the July Revolution, Fabré-Palaprat published the Evangelikon, a Gnostic version of the Gospel of John that omits intra-textual commentary and the Resurrection narrative, preceded by an introduction and a commentary allegedly written by Nicephorus, a Greek monk of Athens, that carries the name Lévitikon.
This group played frequently at clubs in NYC in the late 1990s, including CBGB's, The Cooler, The Continental, ABC No Rio and The Pyramid. Heidt posed shirtless for Paper Magazine's 1998 "Beautiful People" issue. During this period Heidt also wrote the columns "From the Priest Factory" and "The Gnostic Eye" which ran in the Religious Observer and its successor, Deolog. With CitiZen One and Metal Tiger Technologies, Heidt started the 67-year performance project Lovesphere in 1996 with a 36-hour improvised musical at the Museum of Sound Recording.
In the various branches of the Neoplatonic school (third century onwards), the demiurge is the fashioner of the real, perceptible world after the model of the Ideas, but (in most Neoplatonic systems) is still not itself "the One". In the arch-dualist ideology of the various Gnostic systems, the material universe is evil, while the non-material world is good. According to some strains of Gnosticism, the demiurge is malevolent, as it is linked to the material world. In others, including the teaching of Valentinus, the demiurge is simply ignorant or misguided.
The conventional translation as 'heretic' was already common in the 19th century when Christian Bartholomae (1885),. derived zandik from Avestan zanda, which he treated as a name of certain heretics. Zindīq (زنديق) or Zandik (𐭦𐭭𐭣𐭩𐭪) was initially used to negatively denote the followers of the Manichaeism religion in the Sasanian Empire. By the time of the 8th-century Abbasid Caliphate, however, the meaning of the word zindīq and the adjectival zandaqa had broadened and could loosely denote many things: Gnostic Dualists as well as followers of Manichaeism, Agnostics & Atheists.
The Cerdonians were a Gnostic sect founded by Cerdo, a Syrian, who came to Rome about 137, but concerning whose history little is known. They held that there are two first causes — the perfectly good and the perfectly evil. The latter is also the creator of the world, the god of the Jews, and the author of the Old Testament. Jesus Christ is the son of the good deity; he was sent into the world to oppose the evil; but his incarnation, and therefore his sufferings, were a mere appearance.
Despite being nominated for a Nebula Award, the book fell out of print, only later being republished. The new edition contains a foreword by David Brin and an afterword by environmentalist and social change theorist James John Bell. Brin places the book in the context of Brunner's time and other writings. In the afterword, Bell treats the book almost as prophecy, drawing parallels between events in the book and subsequent real world developments: "His words have a kind of Gnostic power embedded in them that gives his characters passage into our world".
In the creed of the Gnostic Mass she is also identified with Mother Earth, in her most fertile sense. Along with her status as an archetype or goddess, Crowley believed that Babalon had an earthly aspect or avatar; a living woman who occupied the spiritual office of the 'Scarlet Woman'. This office, first identified in The Book of the Law is usually described as a counterpart to his own identification as "To Mega Therion" (The Great Beast). The rôle of the Scarlet Woman was to help manifest the energies of the Aeon of Horus.
In Gnosticism, Eve is often seen as the embodiment of the supreme feminine principle, called Barbelo. She is equated with the light-maiden of Sophia, creator of the word (Logos) of God, the thygater tou photos or simply the Virgin Maiden, Parthenos. In other texts she is equated with Zoe (Life).Krosney, Herbert (2007) "The Lost Gospel: the quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot" (National Geographic) In other Gnostic texts, such as the Hypostasis of the Archons, the Pistis Sophia is equated with Eve's daughter, Norea, the wife of Seth.
The Trimorphic Protennoia is a Sethian Gnostic text from the New Testament apocrypha. The only surviving copy comes from the Nag Hammadi library (Codex XIII). > I [am] the Thought of the Father, Protennoia, that is, Barbelo, the perfect > Glory, and the immeasurable Invisible One who is hidden. I am the Image of > the Invisible Spirit, and it is through me that the All took shape, and (I > am) the Mother (as well as) the Light which she appointed as Virgin, she who > is called 'Meirothea', the incomprehensible Womb, the unrestrainable and > immeasurable Voice.
Located semi- obscured on the south aisle of the church's west wall is The Layer Monument, a marble polychrome mural monument installed circa 1600 to commemorate the merchant, lawyer and mayor Christopher Layer. Its four figurines housed in its pilasters, Pax, Gloria, Vanitas and Labor are sculpted in the art-style of Northern Mannerism. Collectively the Layer Quaternity utilizes esoteric symbolism. The church also has identifiable associations with early British Freemasonry including a 19th-century headstone in its graveyard which depicts Masonic compasses along with the ancient Greek gnostic symbol of the Ouroboros.
The second degree of yaqeen is what one calls in Sufi terms ayn-ul-yaqeen (the vision of certainty), that is, certainty as a consequence of contemplation and vision. At this level, the object of certainty is present in front of the gnostic and is not only a speculative concept. Here knowledge becomes what one calls ilm-e-huzuri’’ (knowledge by Presence), and that is the second aspect of Certainty in the spiritual way and in liberating experience. By this kind of knowledge, the man of the Way is distinguished from philosophers and learned men.
The text is written with strong poetic skill (notable even in translation), and includes a heavily cyclical presentation of themes. It is not a "gospel" in the sense of an account of the works of Jesus of Nazareth, but is better understood as a homily. The text is generally considered by scholars one of the best written texts in the whole Nag Hammadi collection, considering its worth highly as both a great literary work and a gnostic exegesis on several gospels, canonical and otherwise. The ideas expressed deviate from the views of Valentinian gnosticism.
193–194 . Among her grandchildren was the campaigning journalist Roly Drower. Her works include the comprehensive description and display of the last practising gnostic Mandaeans’ rituals, rites, and customs in The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran: Their Cults, Customs, Magic, Legends, and Folklore, The Canonical Prayerbook of the Mandaeans (a translation of the Qolusta), The Secret Adam (Mandaeans), and The Peacock Angel (novel about the Yezidis), editions of unique manuscripts of astronomical divinations (omen) and magical texts (The Book of the Zodiac; A Book of Black Magic; A Phylactery for Rue).
The Blue Equinox, officially known as The Equinox: Volume III, Number I, is a book written by the English occultist Aleister Crowley, the founder of Thelema. First published in 1919,Lon Milo Duquette, The Magick of Aleister Crowley: A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema, page 258 (Red Wheel/Weiser; 1993). it details the principles and aims of the secret society O.T.O. and its ally the A∴A∴, both of which were under Crowley's control at the time. It includes such topics as The Law of Liberty, The Gnostic Mass, and Crowley's "Hymn to Pan".
Noble Drew Ali During the first half of the 20th century, a small number of African Americans established groups based on Islamic and Gnostic teachings. The first of such groups created was the Moorish Science Temple of America, founded by Timothy Drew (Drew Ali) in 1913. Drew taught that black people were of Moorish origin but their Muslim identity was taken away through slavery and racial segregation, advocating the return to Islam of their Moorish ancestry. This is not an unlikely idea, considering the first major Muslim immigrants came through the slave trade.
But the fourth and final track on the EP, "S.K.D. (Systematic Killing of the American Dream)," was the first collaboration between Merrill and Johnson, and remains one of the most popular songs in the band's set to this day. The song "Shedding Faith" made the top 20 on Rapture Radio's weekly request chart.CD Baby website album notes The band attempted a full-length release in 2005 titled Pattern of Decay, but Gardner and Freeman both left the band (Freeman left to join Gnostic with former members of Atheist, including drummer Steve FlynnGary Sharpe-Young (Nov.
During the Renaissance, use of the term diverged to refer to gnostic knowledge that offers the individual enlightenment and salvation through a knowledge of the bonds that are believed to unite her or him to the world of divine or intermediary spirits. Christian theosophy arose in Germany in the 16th century. Inspired to a considerable extent by the works of Paracelsus (1493–1541). The term had not yet reached a settled meaning, however, as the mid-16th century Theosophia by Johannes Arboreus provided a lengthy exposition that included no mention of esotericism.
Since Tzaddi=90, which is also Mem spelled in full, the gematric > substitution may be deliberate or a blind. In Harleian Ms. 6482, titled "The > Rosie Crucian Secrets" (printed by the Aquarian Press, 1985), Dr. Rudd lists > Cimeries as the 26th spirit made use of by King Solomon. He also attributes > an angel Cimeriel to one of Dee's Enochian Ensigns of Creation, the tablet > of 24 mansions (see McLean, Treatise on Angel Magic). The earliest mention > of Chamariel is in Rossi's Gnostic tractate (see Meyer and Smith, Ancient > Christian Magic).
Thunder Perfect Mind is an album by the English experimental group Current 93, released on 28 July 1992. It contains two tracks based on the Gnostic poem The Thunder, Perfect Mind, which also gave the album its name. Thunder Perfect Mind has a companion album by the same name recorded by Nurse With Wound, released at the same time, though the two albums have little in common with each other musically. The album is one of David Tibet's more personal records, with several songs dedicated to friends, colleagues and people he had met.
After World War 2 Robert Ambelain created a new "Martinist Order of the Élus Cohen" as a revival of the Order of Pasqually. This was officially closed, as publicly announced in the Martinist magazine L'Initiation, in 1964. However, several strains of martinist-orders have continued to operate the Elus Cohens in succession of the Ambelain resurgence. Today the Elus Cohens is mainly worked in two different manners, one in the fashion of Robert Ambelain, heavily influenced by his own Gnostic Church, the rite of Memphis-Misraim and his personal take on the kabbalah.
A lion-faced Chnuphis figure found on a Gnostic gem in Bernard de Montfaucon's L'antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures, often associated with Yaldabaoth. Kneph is a motif in ancient Egyptian religious art, variously a winged egg, a globe surrounded by one or more serpents, or Amun in the form of a serpent called Kematef.The Egyptian revival: ancient Egypt as the inspiration for design motifs in the west by James Stevens Curl, p.445, Psychology Press, 18 Nov 2005 Some Theosophical sources tried to syncretize this motif with the deity Khnum, along with Serapis and Pluto.
Helen E. Bond considered Van Voorst's treatment of the New Testament apocrypha particularly strong, while Curt Niccum found his book generally useful but least good on Jewish literature. G. Van Belle criticised Van Voorst's assignment of to the Signs Gospel against the verdict of two authors cited in the book. Van Voorst's attitude towards the New Testament provoked divergent judgments. Thomas O'Loughlin, while concluding that the book was up-to-date and generally balanced, thought that an apologetic agenda had led Van Voorst to place the New Testament "almost outside of history" and to simplistically classify non-canonical Christian texts as "gnostic".
Any entity that is not sapient may be considered categorically amoral. For example, a rock may be used (by rational agents) for good or bad purposes, but the rock itself is neither good nor bad. In ontological philosophy, the ancient gnostic concept that the material world was inherently evil applied morality to existence itself and was a point of concern in early Christianity in the form of Docetism, as it opposed the notion that creation is good, as stated in The Book of Genesis. In modern science, however, the matter of the universe is often observed amorally for objective purposes.
The Dormition/Assumption of Mary makes its first appearance in two apocryphal texts from the third and fourth centuries, the Liber Requiei Mariae ("Book of Mary's Repose"), and the "Six Books Dormition Apocryphon". Both come from heterodox (i.e., proto-heretical) circles, the first having strong Gnostic overtones and the second associated with a sect called the Kollyridians, whom Epiphanius condemned for their excessive devotion to Mary. Notable later apocrypha based on these include De Obitu S. Dominae and De Transitu Virginis, both probably from the 5th century, with further versions by Dionysius the Areopagite, and St Gregory of Tours, among others.
The Neo-Luciferian Church incorporates elements from Thelema, Gnosticism, Voodoo, traditional occultism, and witchcraft. There is an emphasis on art, psychology, and critical thinking. The mythology draws heavily on Roman and Greek sources, and more dubious modern writings such as Charles Leland's Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, the works of Dion Fortune, Michael Bertiaux, and Aleister Crowley. The Neo-Luciferian Church operates within a grade system of seven degrees and belongs in the succession from a number of churches, some Gnostic and magical in origin, others belonging to the succession described in the Ecclesia Gnostica Spiritualis.
Bart Ehrman argues that the historical Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher, and that his apocalyptic beliefs are recorded in the earliest Christian documents: Mark and the authentic Pauline epistles. The earliest Christians believed Jesus would soon return, and their beliefs are echoed in the earliest Christian writings. The Gospel of Thomas proclaims that the Kingdom of God is already present for those who understand the secret message of Jesus (Saying 113), and lacks apocalyptic themes. Because of this, Ehrman argues, the Gospel of Thomas was probably composed by a Gnostic some time in the early 2nd century.
Familiarity with English is not uncommon among the middle and upper classes. Arabic is not commonly spoken in Turkey, Iran, and Israel, and some varieties of Arabic lack mutual intelligibility, thus qualifying as distinct languages by this linguistic criterion. The Middle East was the birthplace of the Abrahamic, Gnostic, and most Iranian religions. Initially the ancient inhabitants of the region followed various ethnic religions, but most of those began to be gradually replaced at first by Christianity (even before the 313 AD Edict of Milan) and finally by Islam (after the spread of the Muslim conquests beyond the Arabian Peninsula in 634 AD).
Zurvanism (Zurvanite Zoroastrianism), Manichaeism, and Mandaeism are representative of dualistic and monist philosophies since each has a supreme and transcendental First Principle from which the two equal-but- opposite entities then emanate. This is also true for the lesser-known Christian gnostic religions, such as Bogomils, Catharism, and so on. More complex forms of monist dualism also exist, for instance in Hermeticism, where Nous "thought"—that is described to have created man—brings forth both good and evil, dependent on interpretation, whether it receives prompting from the God or from the Demon. Duality with pluralism is considered a logical fallacy.
It is suggested that the library was initially a simple grave robbing and the more fanciful aspects of the story were concocted as a cover story. Burials of books were common in Egypt in the early centuries AD, but if the library was a funerary deposit it conflicts with Robinson's belief that the manuscripts were purposely hidden out of fear of persecution. The blood feud, however, is well attested by multiple sources. Slowly, most of the tracts came into the hands of Phokion J. Tanos,The Gnostic Discoveries: The Impact of the Nag Hammadi Library; also known as Phocion J(ean) Tano, cf.
In the Quran, the "Sabians" (, ') are mentioned three times alongside Jews and Christians. Most critical scholars today believe this term refers to the Manichaeans/Elkaisaites, an Abrahamic religious group that followed Jesus and was unrelated to the gnostic Mandaeans (who rejected Jesus). Confusion of the two occurs primarily among non-Arabic speakers, to whom the Quranic word ' (from the root ص ب أ) seems similar to the word ' (from the root ص ب ب). According to most scholars, Mandaeaism originated sometime in the first three centuries CE, in either southwestern Mesopotamia or the Syro-Palestinian area.
The fathers of early Christianity used the word gnosis (knowledge) to mean spiritual knowledge or specific knowledge of the divine. This positive usage was to contrast it with how gnostic sectarians used the word. This positive use carried over from Hellenic philosophy into Greek Orthodoxy as a critical characteristic of ascetic practices, through St. Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Hippolytus of Rome, Hegesippus, and Origen. Cardiognosis ("knowledge of the heart") from Eastern Christianity related to the tradition of the starets and in Roman Catholic theology is the view that only God knows the condition of one's relationship with God.
Gikatilla's Shaarei Ora From the Renaissance onwards Jewish Kabbalah texts entered non-Jewish culture, where they were studied and translated by Christian Hebraists and Hermetic occultists.Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction, Joseph Dan, Oxford University Press 2007. Chapters: 5 "Modern Times-I The Christian Kabbalah"; 9 "Some Aspects of Contemporary Kabbalah" The syncretic traditions of Christian Cabala and Hermetic Qabalah developed independently of Judaic Kabbalah, reading the Jewish texts as universalist ancient wisdom preserved from the Gnostic traditions of antiquity. Both adapted the Jewish concepts freely from their Jewish understanding, to merge with multiple other theologies, religious traditions and magical associations.
Schreck's "The Manson File" (1988) is a thorough study of the philosophy, music and spiritual ideas of Charles Manson. The book brings Manson's previously obscure ATWA ecology concept and his religious devotion to the Gnostic god Abraxas to public attention. Schreck posited that the demonization of Manson (and perhaps the martyrdom of Manson by other groups) is the result of media sensationalism. In April 2011, Schreck's The Manson File: Myth and Reality of an Outlaw Shaman, a new and greatly expanded edition of over 900 pages was released in France as "Le Dossier Manson : Mythe Et Réalité D'un Chaman Hors-La-Loi".
Much of our biographical information about him comes from Porphyry's preface to his edition of Plotinus' Enneads. While he was himself influenced by the teachings of classical Greek, Persian and Indian philosophy and Egyptian theology,Porphyry, On the Life of Plotinus and the Order of His Books, Ch. 3 (Armstrong's Loeb translation). his metaphysical writings later inspired numerous Christian, Jewish, Islamic and Gnostic metaphysicians and mystics over the centuries. Plotinus taught that there is a supreme, totally transcendent "One", containing no division, multiplicity, nor distinction; likewise, it is beyond all categories of being and non-being.
Nezami was not a philosopherSeyyed Hossein Nasr, Mehdi Amin Razavi, "The Islamic intellectual tradition in Persia", RoutledgeCurzon; annotated edition (July 4, 1996). pp. 178–187 in the sense of Avicenna or an expositor of theoretical Sufism in the sense of Ibn 'Arabi. However, he is regarded as a philosopher and gnostic who mastered various fields of Islamic thoughts which he synthesized in a way that brings to mind the traditions of later Hakims such as Qutb al-Din Shirazi. Often referred to by the honorific Hakim ("the Sage"), Nezami is both a learned poet and master of a lyrical and sensuous style.
He attempted to revive the tradition and practiced it himself, and during his reign, the last national competitions were held. Following the Iranian Revolution of 1979 the tradition lost some of its popularity as the new regime discouraged anything tied to pre-Islamic paganism, which included the Gnostic and Mithraic chants and rituals of the zourkhāneh. This did not last, however, as the Islamic Republic eventually promoted varzesh-e bastani as a symbol of Iranian pride and culture. Today, varzesh-e pahlavāni is touted as the reason why Iranians are regular winners at international wrestling and weight-lifting events.
On the day, the congregation was equally divided between mourners – Crowley's friends – and reporters. John Symonds, Crowley's biographer, records that "the tall and dignified figure of Louis Wilkinson" read Crowley's poem "Hymn of Pan", extracts from The Book of the Law, and finally Collects from the Gnostic Mass. The attendant press sensationalised the event with lurid headlines, suggesting that a Black Mass had taken place, and the scandalised local authority announced that steps would be taken to prevent any recurrence of such a ceremony. In 1948, Wilkinson was sufficiently well regarded to be photographed for the National Portrait Gallery by Walter Stoneman.
For thou art my rest; thou art my first-begotten Son that reignest for ever. (Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 4) : Fragment 2 uses the language of Jewish Wisdom literature, but applies it to the Holy Spirit: the Spirit has waited in vain through all the prophets for the Son. The "rest" that the Holy Spirit finds in the Son belongs to the Christian gnostic idea of the pre- existent Redeemer who finally becomes incarnate in Jesus. 3\. Even so did my mother, the Holy Spirit, take me by one of my hairs and carry me away on to the great mountain Tabor.
Hoffman, Joel M. In the Beginning : A Short History of the Hebrew Language. New York, New York University Press, 2006, p. 169. The earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date to the 10th century BCE. Hebrew belongs to the Northwest Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, and is the only Canaanite language still spoken and the only truly successful example of a revived dead language, and one of only two Northwest Semitic languages still spoken, the other being Aramaic, which is spoken primarily by Christian Assyrians and Syriac-Arameans, the Gnostic Mandeans as well as some Near Eastern Jews.
The separate and non-canonical "Secret Gospel of Mark"—fragments of which were contained in the controversial Mar Saba letter by Clement of Alexandria, which Morton Smith claimed to have discovered in 1958—states that Jesus during one night taught the mystery of the kingdom of God alone to a youth wearing only a linen cloth. This has been linked to the views of an ancient group called the Carpocratians. Some modern commentators interpret it as a baptism, others as some form of sexual initiation, and others as an allegory for a non-sexual initiation into a gnostic sect.
Barbara and Kurt Aland (1988) After having completed her degree of Theology and Classical Philology in Frankfurt, Marburg and Kiel she received the PhD (dissertation on the Socratic Aischines) in 1964 in Frankfurt/Germany. In 1969 she gained her licentiate at the "Oriental Faculty" of Pontificio Istituto Biblico in Rome, Italy. In 1972 she could habilitate in Göttingen about the Syrian gnostic Bardesanes of Edessa. Since 1972 she acted as private lecturer, later on she became professor for "Church History and New Testament Research with eminently consideration of Christian Orient" at the Evangelisch- Theologischen Fakultät in Münster, Germany.
In Gnosticism and other Western mystical traditions, the divine spark is the portion of God that resides within each human being. In these theologies, the purpose of life is to enable the Divine Spark to be released from its captivity in matter and reestablish its connection with or simply return to God, who is perceived as being the source of the Divine Light. In the Gnostic Christian tradition, Christ is seen as a wholly divine being which has taken human form in order to lead humanity back to the Light. The Cathars of medieval Europe also shared the belief in the divine spark.
The LR has been described as a "christo-centric mystery school" which claims to be inspired by the "ancient Christian mysteries" (the Cathars, the Grail, Rosicrucianism), and is said to be the guardian of these teachings. Massimo Introvigne has defined the LR as a "dualistic and gnostic Christianity" which is not part of the New Age, but was able to find members in this movement. In its statutes, the French branch stated that its goal is "the spread of the mysteries of the rosy cross, gnosis, and the holy grail", and rejected "the magic, mediumship, and all occult or astrological practice".
It costs around $60 for a 'divine glimpse' of the couple in a crowded room, and $700 for a one-on-one meeting with Kalki Bhagavan himself. The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements says that Vijaykumar is currently the most famous of the spiritual leaders laying claim to being the final and future avatar of Kalki. Other individuals who have claimed to be Kalki include Agastya Joshi, who also claimed to be Mahdi; and Samael Aun Weor, founder of the Universal Christian Gnostic Movement. Another claimant is Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi of the Kalki Avatar Foundation, founded in 2000 by Younus AlGohar.
Under the Parthian and Sassanid Empires, Babylon (like Assyria) became a province of these Persian Empires for nine centuries, until after AD 650\. It maintained its own culture and people, who spoke varieties of Aramaic, and who continued to refer to their homeland as Babylon. Examples of their culture are found in the Babylonian Talmud, the Gnostic Mandaean religion, Eastern Rite Christianity and the religion of the philosopher Mani. Christianity was introduced to Mesopotamia in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, and Babylon was the seat of a Bishop of the Church of the East until well after the Arab/Islamic conquest.
The Refutation of All Heresies (, ), also called the Elenchus or Philosophumena, is a compendious Christian polemical work of the early third century, now generally attributed to Hippolytus of Rome. It catalogues both pagan beliefs and 33 gnostic Christian systems deemed heretical, making it a major source of information on contemporary opponents of Catholic orthodoxy.Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism (1983 English translation), p. 13. The first book, a synopsis of Greek philosophy, circulated separately in several manuscripts and was known as the Philosophoumena ( "philosophical teachings"), a title which some extend to the whole work.
The manuscript contains the complete text of two of the Odes, portions of two others, and what is believed to be Ode 1 (this ode is unattested in any other manuscript and may not be complete). Pistis Sophia is a Gnostic text composed in Egypt, perhaps a translation from Greek with Syrian provenance. After the discovery of portions of the Odes of Solomon in Pistis Sophia, scholars searched to find more complete copies of these intriguing texts. In 1909, James Rendel Harris discovered a pile of forgotten leaves from a Syriac manuscript lying on a shelf in his study.
David DeFeis also created his own recording studio called: "The Hammer of Zeus" (sometimes also called "The Wrecking Ball Of Thor"). In September 2006, after 6 years without an all-new studio album, the band released its 11th full-length Visions of Eden. The album revolves heavily around Gnostic beliefs and critically revisits the traditional Christian mythology with regards to the creation of the Earth and the Biblical accounts of Adam and Eve. An even darker, more melancholic drama than the House of Atreus saga, the story revolves around Lilith, the first wife of Adam and a symbol of female strength and independence.
45, No. 4, Dec. 1954, pp. 331-338 For the history of alchemy, as Marie-Louise von Franz points out, Ibn Umail's Book of the Explanation of Symbols (Ḥall ar-Rumūz) can be regarded as a cultural link "within the mystical branch of alchemy, between the Gnostic Hermetic Greek alchemy and that of the mystical Latin alchemy in Europe", enabling a "better understanding of the religious dimension of symbolic Arabic alchemy". Among others, Ibn Umail commented on typical Pharaonic images and symbols such as the frog and snail, thus connecting the work of alchemy to the Egyptian quest for creating a resurrection body.
He also used mystic prayers of his own composition to call on the names of angels that were not accepted by the church canon (Uriel, Raguel, Tubuel, Adinus, Tubuas, Sabaoc and Simiel), and which his detractors alleged were demons that he invoked (some of these angel names also had gnostic connections). One of his prayers invoked by name the angel Raguel. His "miracles" gained him the awe of the people and he began to give away parings from his nails and locks of his hair as powerful amulets. He managed to get 'unlearned' (indoctri) bishops to consecrate him a bishop.
According to Hippolytus of Rome, this view was inspired by the Pythagoreans, for whom the first existing thing was the Monad, which begat the dyad, which begat the numbers, which begat the point, begetting lines, and so on.Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. Pythagorean and Platonic philosophers like Plotinus and Porphyry condemned the "gnosis" that would later characterize Gnostic systems for their treatment of the Monad or One (see Neoplatonism and Gnosticism). For a long time, legend persisted that a young man by the name of Epiphanes, who died at the age of 17, was the leader of Monadic Gnosticism.
Philip I Barlow criticizes the work as carelessly seeking out relations to Hermeticism which Brooke knows better than Mormonism, and believes that Brooke's links to Hermeticism can be explained away with "a particular and selectively literal reading of the Bible." Albanese was criticised by Richard J Neuhaus as having denied Christianity the metaphysical in order to minimize its influence and that she is avoiding theology by calling her book a cultural history. Albanese believes that the metaphysical denial in scholarly research is due to its strong feminist qualities. Neuhaus believes American Christianity is more Gnostic in nature than Hermetic.
8) with Poimandres as an exception.(Van den Broek "Gnosticism and Hermetism in Antiquity" from Gnosis and Hermeticism: from Antiquity to Modern Times pp. 12-13) Hermetism is optimistic about God, while many forms of Christian Gnosticism are pessimistic about the creator (a different being from their conception of God): Several Christian Gnostic sects saw the Cosmos were the product of an evil creator and thus evil itself, while Hermetists saw the Cosmos as a beautiful creation in the image of God.(Van den Broek "Gnosticism and Hermetism in Antiquity" from Gnosis and Hermeticism: from Antiquity to Modern Times pp.
De Carne Christi () is a polemical work by Tertullian against the Gnostic Docetism of Marcion, Apelles, Valentinus and Alexander. It purports that the body of Christ was a real human body, born from the virginal body of Mary, but not by way of human procreation. Among other justifications for the incarnation of Christ, it states that "the choice of 'foolish' flesh is part of [God's] conscious rejection of conventional wisdom" and that "Without true incarnation, there can be no true redemption... God must have flesh, in order to have a real death and real resurrection." (De Carne Christi, Mahé edition).
In the Books of Jeu this "great Man" is the King of the Light- treasure, he is enthroned above all things and is the goal of all souls. According to the Naassenes, the Protanthropos is the first element; the fundamental being before its differentiation into individuals. "The Son of Man" is the same being after it has been individualized into existing things and thus sunk into matter. The Gnostic Anthrôpos, therefore, or Adamas, as it is sometimes called, is a cosmogonic element, pure mind as distinct from matter, mind conceived hypostatically as emanating from God and not yet darkened by contact with matter.
Justin Martyr records that Simon Magus, a gnostic mentioned in the Christian Bible, performed such miracles by magic acts during the reign of Claudius that he was regarded as a god and honored with a statue on the island in the Tiber which the two bridges cross, with the inscription Simoni Deo Sancto, "To Simon the Holy God".The First Apology, Chapter XXVI.—Magicians not trusted by Christians, Justin Martyr. However, in 1574, the Semo Sancus statue was unearthed on the island in question, leading most scholars to believe that Justin Martyr confused Semoni Sanco with Simon.
Such a publicly circulated Epistle was a literary form, rather than an actual missive sent by a "Ptolemy" to a "Flora", though it preserves that fiction, as all epistles do. The Letter was the classical equivalent of the Renaissance and modern Essay format. The attack on Ptolemy by Irenaeus does not eliminate the possibility that the present letter ascribed to him was composed by Epiphanius, in the manner of composed speeches that ancient historians put into the mouths of their protagonists, as a succinct way to sum up the Gnostic views he was intent on demolishing.
The original headquarters of the Gnostic Society was in John's home in Los Angeles (address: 919 South Bernal Avenue, Los Angeles, California). In July 1888 the Pryse brothers arrived in New York City. In 1889, members of the Theosophical Society from New York City and Chicago purchased a printing press and type, for the purpose of setting up a publishing company which would handle the publishing needs of the various branches of the Theosophical Society located in the United States. This theosophical publishing company, named the Aryan Press, was located at 144 Madison Avenue in Manhattan, New York City.
The Perates or Peratae (, "to pass through"; πέρας, "to penetrate") were a Gnostic sect from the 2nd century AD. The Philosophumena of Hippolytus is our only real source of information on their origin and beliefs. The founders of the school were a certain Euphrates (whom Origen calls the founder of those Ophites to whom Celsus referred about 175 AD) and Celbes, elsewhere called Acembes and Ademes. It had been known from Clement of Alexandria that there was a sect of that name, though he tells nothing as to its tenets. Hippolytus was acquainted with more books of the sect than one.
The first issue of Tales of the Unanticipated was launched in August 1986. Over the years, notable authors who contributed fiction, articles and/or poetry have included Kate Wilhelm, Eleanor Arnason, Damon Knight, Bruce Bethke, John Sladek, Stephen Dedman, and Neil Gaiman. Writers who had their first published short stories premiere in TOTU include Peg Kerr, Jason Sanford, Kij Johnson, Carolyn Ives Gilman, and others who had important early appearances of their work in the magazine include Lyda Morehouse.Encyclopedia of Science Fiction article The short story "Koan" was eventually made into the short film The Gnostic starring Francesco Quinn.
Solovyov also advocated for his cause internationally and published a letter in The London Times pleading for international support for his struggle. The Jewish Encyclopedia describes him as "a friend of the Jews" and states that "Even on his death-bed he is said to have prayed for the Jewish people". Solovyov's attempts to chart a course of civilization's progress toward an East-West Christian ecumenicism developed an increasing bias against Asian cultures which he initially studied with great interest. He dismissed the Buddhist concept of Nirvana as a pessimistic nihilistic "nothingness" which was antithetical to salvation, no better than Gnostic dualism.
Glassé remarks on: a) the pre-Islamic Berber connections to Gnostic doctrines, and b) the Manichaean leadership near Baghdad, proximous to the Ismailis; he see this as further reasons for the Kotama Berber resonance with the Ismaili Da'i, at 124. After his success in recruitment and in building the organization, Abu 'Abdulla was ready in 902 to send for 'Ubaidalla Sa'ed, who (after adventures and Aghlibid imprisonment in Sijilmasa) arrived in 910. 'Ubaidall Sa'ed then proclaimed himself Mahdi, literally "the guided one", an august Islamic title of supreme command, taking the name Ubayd Allah al-Mahdi Billah.
Amulets and seals bearing the figure of Abraxas were popular in the 2nd century, and these stones survived in the treasuries of the middle ages. Abraxas appears on the seal of a Templar Grand Master in a French charter dated 1214. The Templars' use of Abraxas as a seal was most likely a result of their expansive treasuries containing a number of ancient gemstones. Despite this use of Abraxas as a seal, no accusations of Gnosticism were made against the Templars (despite extensive torture and intense persecution), indicating that none of their beliefs or practices could have been construed as Gnostic.
The various Christological positions, and their names ;Only divine? Docetism (from the Greek verb to seem) taught that Jesus was fully divine, and his human body was only illusory. At a very early stage, various Docetic groups arose; in particular, the gnostic sects which flourished in the 2nd century AD tended to have Docetic theologies. Docetic teachings were attacked by St. Ignatius of Antioch (early 2nd century), and appear to be targeted in the canonical Epistles of John (dates are disputed, but range from the late 1st century among traditionalist scholars to the late 2nd century among critical scholars).
The Ming Cult is a fictional cult and martial arts sect featured in the wuxia novel The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber by Jin Yong, first published in serial form from 1961 to 1963. It is also briefly mentioned in The Legend of the Condor Heroes, another novel also by Jin Yong. It is loosely based on Manichaeism, an actual gnostic religion which originated in Persia and spread to other parts of the world, including China. The cult is based on Bright Peak in the Kunlun Mountains and has several other bases spread throughout the land.
Stanton J. Linden. The alchemy reader: from Hermes Trismegistus to Isaac Newton Cambridge University Press. 2003. p.44 Later, the experimental framework established by Jabir ibn Hayyan influenced alchemists as the discipline migrated through the Islamic world, then to Europe in the 12th century CE. During the Renaissance, exoteric alchemy remained popular in the form of Paracelsian iatrochemistry, while spiritual alchemy flourished, realigned to its Platonic, Hermetic, and Gnostic roots. Consequently, the symbolic quest for the philosopher's stone was not superseded by scientific advances, and was still the domain of respected scientists and doctors until the early 18th century.
Epiphany may have originated in the Greek-speaking eastern half of the Roman Empire as a feast to honor the baptism of Jesus. Around 200, Clement of Alexandria wrote that, "But the followers of [the early Christian Gnostic religious teacher] Basilides celebrate the day of His Baptism too, spending the previous night in readings. And they say that it was the 15th of the month Tybi of the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar. And some say that it was observed the 11th of the same month." The Egyptian dates given correspond to January 6 and 10.
A new field in Valentinian studies opened when the Nag Hammadi library was discovered in Egypt in 1945. Among the very mixed bag of works classified as gnostic was a series of writings which could be associated with Valentinus, particularly the Coptic text called the Gospel of Truth which bears the same title reported by Irenaeus as belonging to a text by Valentinus.Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 3.11.9. It is a declaration of the unknown name of Jesus's divine father, the possession of which enables the knower to penetrate the veil of ignorance that has separated all created beings from said father.
They became friends, with Crowley authorising Gardner to revive Britain's ailing O.T.O. Another visitor was Eliza Marian Butler, who interviewed Crowley for her book The Myth of the Magus. Other friends and family also spent time with him, among them Doherty and Crowley's son Aleister Atatürk. On 1 December 1947, Crowley died at Netherwood of chronic bronchitis aggravated by pleurisy and myocardial degeneration, aged 72. His funeral was held at a Brighton crematorium on 5 December; about a dozen people attended, and Louis Wilkinson read excerpts from the Gnostic Mass, The Book of the Law, and "Hymn to Pan".
They subsequently performed in Moscow for six weeks, where Crowley had a sadomasochistic relationship with the Hungarian Anny Ringler. In Moscow, Crowley continued to write plays and poetry, including "Hymn to Pan", and the Gnostic Mass, a Thelemic ritual that became a key part of O.T.O. liturgy. Churton suggested that Crowley had travelled to Moscow on the orders of British intelligence to spy on revolutionary elements in the city. In January 1914 Crowley and Neuburg settled into an apartment in Paris, where the former was involved in the controversy surrounding Jacob Epstein's new monument to Oscar Wilde.
The Mandaean religion, whose adherents according to their traditions are the original followers of John the Baptist, and who are considered to be the only surviving Gnostic group in the world, also originated in the region at this time (or slightly earlier during the Parthian era). Their language and script was the Mandaic form of Aramaic. Two of their central works, both written within the 2nd and 3rd centuries, are the Ginza Rabba and the Mandaean Book of John (preserving original traditions about John the Baptist). The Mandean population numbers no more than 50,000 to 75,000 today.
Pir Sultan Abdal's ethnic origin is Turkish, his poetry was in the Turkish language and he originated from Sivas, which is mostly populated by ethnic Turks. Although Some researchers believe "Pir Sultan" wasn't just the one in Sivas, who has rebelled against the state and hanged for his religious convictions by Hızır Paşa's orders. Most of the information about him and his era we find in his verses, which reveal him as cultivated well educated and intellectual. Pir Sultan Abdal, was an Alevi, his early work is dedicated to lyrical and pastoral themes and to the gnostic approach he had adopted.
The church was distinct from Dianetics-based groups but incorporated some of their views. Hubbard saw Dianetics as focused on the physical body but viewed Scientology as a way to address spiritual matters. In Hubbard's efforts to shift from a psychotherapeutic to a spiritual program, he introduced the concept of thetans: a set of godlike, non-corporeal entities capable of creating and shaping universes, later trapped in the MEST and confined, by reincarnation, to physical bodies. Hugh Urban of Ohio State University states that these teachings bear similarities to Gnosticism, although he doubts that Hubbard was well versed in Gnostic thought.
With the spread of Christianity in Egypt, by the late 3rd century, knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was lost, as well as Demotic slightly later, making way for a writing system more closely associated with the Christian church. By the 4th century, the Coptic alphabet was "standardised", particularly for the Sahidic dialect. (There are a number of differences between the alphabets as used in the various dialects in Coptic.) Coptic is not generally used today except by the members of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria to write their religious texts. All the Gnostic codices found in Nag Hammadi used the Coptic alphabet.
Christ then took a human form (Jesus), to teach humanity how to achieve Gnosis. The ultimate end of all Gnosis is metanoia (Greek μετάνοια), which is an understanding of the world and higher reality and the knowledge that brings to absolve one of fear of material existence, paving the way to living and experiencing life to its fullest before the soul returns to Pleroma. Aeons bear a number of similarities to Judaeo-Christian angels, including roles as servants and emanations of God, and existing as beings of light. In fact, certain Gnostic Angels, such as Armozel, are also Aeons.
Critics praised Bibi Andersson's performance, and she received the Guldbagge Award for Best Actress. The film was released to favorable reviews in the Swedish and U.S. press. In Sweden, Dagens Nyheter critic Olaf Lagercrantz said that a cult following of Swedish critics had developed by October 1966 and coined the name Person(a)kult for them. In Svenska Dagbladet, Stig Wikander called it "a gnostic quest for divine nothingness". In 1966, theologian Hans Nystedt compared the film to the writings of Hjalmar Sundén. The Swedish Film Institute magazine Chaplin reported that the Person(a)kult had spread beyond Sweden by 1967.
However, the regularity of the Martinist Order was strongly questioned by Brother O. Pontet of the Grand Orient de France,.L'Acacia, Mars 1909, pp 208-211, Les Contrefacteurs de la Maçonnerie: Lettre de J. Desjobert, R. Guénon et V. Blanchard à O. PontetL'Acacia, Mars 1909, pp 211-218, Réponse d'O. Pontet The creation by Guénon in 1909 of an Ordre du Temple within the premises of the Martinist Order, as well as his involvement in a Gnostic Church under the name Palingenius prompted the separation between Papus and Guénon. Many French Martinists supported Karl Wilhelm Naundorff's claims to the French throne.
In 1203, Dominic de Guzmán joined Diego de Acebo on a diplomatic mission to Denmark for the monarchy of Spain, to arrange the marriage between the son of King Alfonso VIII of Castile and a niece of King Valdemar II of Denmark. At that time the south of France was the stronghold of the Cathar movement. The Cathars (also known as Albigensians, due to their stronghold in Albi, France) were a heretical neo-gnostic sect. They believed that matter was evil and only the spirit was good; this was a fundamental challenge to the notion of the incarnation, central to Catholic theology.
Some scriptures identified as Gnostic reject the atonement of Jesus' death by distinguishing the earthly body of Jesus and his divine and immaterial essence. According to the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, Yaldabaoth (the Creator of the material universe) and his Archons tried to kill Jesus by crucifixion, but only killed their own man (that is the body). While Jesus ascended from his body, Yaldabaoth and his followers thought Jesus to be dead.John Douglas Turner, Anne Marie McGuire The Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty Years: Proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoration [in Philadelphia] Brill 1997 p.
Noticeably absent from the collaboration was David Wiffen, a major interpreter of several of Hawkins' earlier songs, both as a member of 3's a Crowd and otherwise. Wiffen, as a member of 3's a Crowd, sang the lead vocal on Hawkins' best known song, "Gnostic Serenade". Hawkins describes the "amazing instrument" of Wiffen's voice as being in his head when he wrote many of the songs to which Hawkins was paid tribute on Dancing Alone; see uncredited, Folk legends Cockburn, Tamblyn record tribute to Ottawa cabbie; www.cbc.ca. Wiffen's current circumstances are not publicly known.
The early Church in the post- apostolic period was much more involved in "defending its frontiers against alternative soteriologies — either by defining its own position with greater and greater exactness, or by attacking other religions, and particularly the Hellenistic mysteries."Eric J. Sharpe, Comparative Religion: A History, London: Duckworth, 1975, p. 9 In fact, a good deal of the early Christian literature is devoted to the exposure and refutation of unorthodox theology, mystery religions and Gnostic groups.Brown, Heresies, pp.38-69.Ronald H. Nash, Christianity and the Hellenistic World, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984, pp.213-224.
According to the German occultist Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535): "Ariel is the name of an angel, sometimes also of a demon, and of a city, whence called Ariopolis, where the idol is worshipped." "Ariel" has been called an ancient name for the leontomorphic Gnostic Demiurge (Creator God). Historically, the entity Ariel was often pictured in mysticism as a lion-headed deity with power over the Earth, giving a strong foundation for Ariel's association with the Demiurge. It is possible that the name itself was even adopted from the Demiurge's Zoroastrian counterpart Ahriman (who is likely the predecessor of the Mithraic "Arimanius").
Demetrius raised a storm of protests against the bishops of Palestine and the church synod in Rome. According to Eusebius, Demetrius published the allegation that Origen had secretly castrated himself, a capital offense under Roman law at the time and one which would have made Origen's ordination invalid, since eunuchs were forbidden from becoming priests. Demetrius also alleged that Origen had taught an extreme form of apokatastasis, which held that all beings, including even Satan himself, would eventually attain salvation. This allegation probably arose from a misunderstanding of Origen's argument during a debate with the Valentinian Gnostic teacher Candidus.
This monastery was the administrative centre of the Pachomian order where the monks would gather twice annually and whose library may have produced many surviving manuscripts of biblical, Gnostic, and other texts in Greek and Coptic. In North Africa, late antique basilicas were often built on a doubled plan. In the 5th century, basilicas with two apses, multiple aisles, and doubled churches were common, including examples respectively at Sufetula, Tipasa, and Djémila. Generally, North African basilica churches' altars were in the nave and the main building medium was opus africanum of local stone, and spolia was infrequently used.
Steiner's views of Christianity diverge from conventional Christian thought in key places, and include gnostic elements. However, unlike many gnostics, Steiner affirms the unique and actual physical Incarnation of Christ in Jesus at the beginning of the Christian era. One of the central points of divergence with conventional Christian thought is found in Steiner's views on reincarnation and karma. Steiner also posited two different Jesus children involved in the Incarnation of the Christ: one child descended from Solomon, as described in the Gospel of Matthew; the other child from Nathan, as described in the Gospel of Luke.
Subsequent novels and short stories, such as The Course of the Heart (1991) and "Empty" (1993), were set between London and the Peak District. They have a lyrical style and a strong sense of place, and take their tension from characteristically conflicting veins of mysticism and realism. The Course of the Heart deals partly with a magical experiment gone wrong, and with an imaginary country which may exist at the heart of Europe, as well as Gnostic themes such as the Pleroma. It weaves together mythology, sexuality, and the troubled past and present of Eastern Europe.
Eerdmans 2006), p. 240. According to Grenfell and Hunt, who identified this fragment as Logia Iesu ("Sayings of Jesus"), the original manuscript contained a collection of Jesus's sayings. They suggested that original manuscript could be a part of the Gospel of Thomas, or Gospel of Philip. The only complete copy of the Gospel of Thomas was found in 1945 when a Coptic version was discovered at Nag Hammadi with a collection of early Christian Gnostic texts. The fragment contains logia (sayings) 1–7 of the Gospel of Thomas on the verso side of the leaf (opisthograph).
Yamauchi began language studies at the University of Hawaii but then transferred his candidacy to studying Biblical languages at Shelton College, Ringwood, New Jersey, and received his B.A. degree there. He then enrolled in Mediterranean studies for his Master of Arts degree at Brandeis University, and then pursued studies in Mandaean Gnostic texts as part of his Ph.D. dissertation at Brandeis University. At Brandeis he studied under the late Cyrus H. Gordon, and expanded his linguistic studies in ancient near eastern languages, which included Hebrew, Aramaic, Akkadian, Ugaritic, Arabic, Syriac, and Coptic. In all he has immersed himself in 22 different languages.
They were then expected to follow the rigid vows of the elite for the rest of their lives. At death, Credentes could also ask for the Consolamentum, the equivalent of the Last Rites of the Cathar community. This was a ceremony of purification of sins which was intended to enable the soul to pass into death in a higher spiritual state, thus enabling it to achieve a better incarnation in its next existence in this world or return to God. An interesting feature of the structure of Cathar faith was its correspondence with that of the early Christian Gnostic movement of Bishop Valentinus.
Around the 11–12th century in Europe, several reincarnationist movements were persecuted as heresies, through the establishment of the Inquisition in the Latin west. These included the Cathar, Paterene or Albigensian church of western Europe, the Paulician movement, which arose in Armenia, and the Bogomils in Bulgaria.Steven Runciman, The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy, 1982, , Cambridge University Press, The Bogomils, Google Books Christian sects such as the Bogomils and the Cathars, who professed reincarnation and other gnostic beliefs, were referred to as "Manichean", and are today sometimes described by scholars as "Neo- Manichean".For example Dondaine, Antoine.
Gnosticism presents a distinction between the highest, unknowable God or Supreme Being and the demiurgic "creator" of the material. Several systems of Gnostic thought present the Demiurge as antagonistic to the will of the Supreme Being: his act of creation occurs in an unconscious semblance of the divine model, and thus is fundamentally flawed, or else is formed with the malevolent intention of entrapping aspects of the divine in materiality. Thus, in such systems, the Demiurge acts as a solution to (or, at least possibly, the problem or cause that gives rise to) the problem of evil.
This being is considered not only blind, or ignorant of its own origins but may, in addition, be evil; its name is also found in Judaism as the Angel of Death and in Christian demonology. This link to Judeo-Christian tradition leads to a further comparison with Satan. Another alternative title for the demiurge is "Saklas", Aramaic for "fool". The angelic name "Ariel" (meaning "the lion of God" in Hebrew) has also been used to refer to the Demiurge and is called his "perfect" name; in some Gnostic lore, Ariel has been called an ancient or original name for Ialdabaoth.
The combination of two Turfan fragments allows the reconstruction of the text of the first part (alaph). The section deals with the nature of the "King of the World of Light" who resides at the "Navel of the World" but is also present on his whole earth, from without as from within, having no limits except where his earth borders on that of his enemy, the "Kingdom of Darkness". Schneemelcher (1990) suggests tentatively that the text may have been designed as a gospel of the gnostic type, perhaps intended to comment on or replace the Christian gospel.
Eroto-comatose lucidity is a technique of sex magic known best by its formulation by English author and occultist Aleister Crowley in 1912, but which has several variations and is used in a number of ways by different spiritual communities.Kraig, Modern Sex Magick: Secrets of Erotic Spirituality, 1988.Frater U.D., Secrets of Western Sex Magic: Magical Energy and Gnostic Trance, 2001. A common form of the ritual uses repeated sexual stimulation (but not to physical orgasm) to place the individual in a state between full sleep and full wakefulness as well as exhaustion, allowing the practitioner to commune with their god.
The first degree is referred to by the name ‘ilm-ul-yaqeen (the knowledge of certainty), which means that certainty is the result of knowledge. At this degree the object of certainty is knowledge just as the aim of knowledge is certainty. Both together are in the soul uniquely, such that certainty is the first degree of spiritual life and the last of speculative experience. This particular degree of mystical yaqeen is the result of divine theophanies in act at the level of existence and also the result of theophanies of lights of nature at the gnostic level.
This is properly the correct usage of the term sheik according to the Sufis. This is the realised gnostic ('arif) of Allah, who has been granted idhn (permission and authorisation) by God (Allah), to lead the followers of the path of Sufism to knowledge of Allah. This idhn is not to be confused with ijazah (authorisation) granted by a sheik or a scholar to a student to teach. Even if all of the scholars and sheiks granted their ijazah to a student, he would still not be a sheik of Instruction until he had the idhn of Allah and Muhammad.
Zacharias discusses some of these in the first part of his book. The fourth-century AD heresiologist Epiphanius of Salamis, for instance, claims that a libertine Gnostic sect known as the Borborites engaged in a version of the Eucharist in which they would smear their hands with menstrual blood and semen and consume them as the blood and body of Christ respectively. He also alleges that, whenever one of the women in their church was experiencing her period, they would take her menstrual blood and everyone in the church would eat it as part of a sacred ritual.
Sadra gave Fayz one of his daughters to marry, they later had a son named, Muhammad Alam al-Huda, who followed in his fathers footsteps. Fayz is said to have produced works that mixed Islamic scriptual moral concerns with Aristotelian, Platonic schemas and illunminationist mysticism- a rationalist gnostic approach.(Rizvi) Some of his works brought him bad attention, he was criticized by Unlama for not using the Idjma in questioning jurisprudence, such as the legitimacy of music and the definition of impurity. One of Fayz students later blames him for encouraging his students to listen to music.
Ean Begg, The Cult of the Black Virgin (1985). Some wish the ceremony that celebrated the beginning of the alleged marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene to be viewed as a "holy wedding"; and Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and their alleged daughter, Sarah, to be viewed as a "holy family", in order to question traditional gender roles and family values.Margaret Starbird, The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail (Bear & Company; 1993). Almost all these claims are at odds with scholarly Christian apologetics, and have been dismissed as being New Age Gnostic heresies.
Cambridge University library manuscript 4113 / Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 405. Irenaeus. Ca. 200 AD.The purpose of "Against Heresies" was to refute the teachings of various Gnostic groups; apparently, several Greek merchants had begun an oratorial campaign in Irenaeus' bishopric, teaching that the material world was the accidental creation of an evil god, from which we are to escape by the pursuit of gnosis. Irenaeus argued that the true gnosis is in fact knowledge of Christ, which redeems rather than escapes from bodily existence.source needed Until the discovery of the Library of Nag Hammadi in 1945, Against Heresies was the best-surviving description of Gnosticism.
To counter his Gnostic opponents, Irenaeus significantly develops Paul's presentation of Christ as the Last Adam. Irenaeus' presentation of Christ as the New Adam is based on Paul's Christ- Adam parallel in Romans 5:12–21. Irenaeus uses this parallel to demonstrate that Christ truly took human flesh. Irenaeus considered it important to emphasize this point because he understands the failure to recognize Christ's full humanity the bond linking the various strains of Gnosticism together, as seen in his statement that "according to the opinion of no one of the heretics was the Word of God made flesh." Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III.11.3.
In that analysis Green and his colleagues addressed the problems of myth and history as propounded in modern biblical scholarship, especially concerning the relationship between the events of Jesus' ministry and teaching and the doctrine of the Incarnation. One of Green's more recent works, The Books the Church Suppressed: Fiction and Truth in The Da Vinci Code, is an argument for orthodox Christianity against Gnosticism as presented in The Da Vinci Code. Green here linked Gnosticism with a decline in society. He also claimed that Gnosticism leads to a decline in morality, so that by ordaining a homosexual bishop the Episcopal Church of the United States has itself shown Gnostic tendencies.
Planē or Plane (), in ancient Greek religion, was an abstract goddess, the personification of the concept of error (her name deriving from the Greek term for 'wandering' [see planet ] ). Though her mythology is obscure, it is known that she was present at the musical competition between the god Apollo and the satyr Marsyas. She is depicted in that scene, looking on in horror at the sight of Marsyas about to be flayed for losing, in a few 4th century mosaics in the House of Aion in Nea Paphos. Planē (or Plane) is also referred to, as an abstract concept, in Christian and Gnostic philosophy.
Veterans of the Brotherhood of the Spirit consider the Warwick era as being the closest to their ideal of a spiritual community composed of independently inspired individuals. Their youthful enthusiasm allowed them to overcome the many hardships created by an insulated environment dedicated to personal growth and spiritual reflection. For the many that came from urban backgrounds, Warwick introduced the realities of self-sufficiency through logging, house building, the cultivating and canning of homegrown food, and the ability to enjoy life without the distractions of mainstream media. Their spiritual belief system was based on aspects of Buddhism and New Age thinking mixed with an enlightened, almost Gnostic form of Christianity.
Christians profess "one God in three divine persons" (God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost). This is not to be understood as a belief in (or worship of) three Gods, nor as a belief that there are three subjectively-perceived "aspects" in one God, both of which the Catholic Church condemns as heresy. The Catholic Church also rejects the notions that God is "composed" of its three persons and that "God" is a genus containing the three persons. The Gnostic text Trimorphic Protennoia presents a threefold discourse of the three forms of Divine Thought: the Father, the Son, and the Mother (Sophia).
Versluis for instance defined "Western esotericism" as "inner or hidden spiritual knowledge transmitted through Western European historical currents that in turn feed into North American and other non-European settings". He added that these Western esoteric currents all shared a core characteristic, "a claim to gnosis, or direct spiritual insight into cosmology or spiritual insight", and accordingly he suggested that these currents could be referred to as "Western gnostic" just as much as "Western esoteric". There are various problems with this model for understanding Western esotericism. The most significant is that it rests upon the conviction that there really is a "universal, hidden, esoteric dimension of reality" that objectively exists.
Starting with the birth of the Jesus child, the film deviates wildly from the New Testament template, with the Virgin Mary now giving birth to twins, likely to give credence to the idea that Gnostic The Gospel of Thomas was actually written by the twin brother of Jesus. However, in keeping with tradition, only the life and suffering of the One is portrayed. Throughout the entire film, Jesus is shadowed by dark agents (the Four Evangelists) who seem to be the puppet masters of the story. But this preordained life spins out of control at the Last Supper, where Jesus develops a fondness for drinking blood.
The Archontics, or Archontici, were a Gnostic sect that existed in Palestine and Armenia, who arose towards the close of the 2nd century CE. They were thus called from the Greek word , "principalities", or "rulers", by reason that they held the world to have been created and ruled by malevolent Archons. Epiphanius of Salamis seems to be the earliest Christian writer who speaks of this sect. He relates that a young priest in Palestine named Peter had been charged with heresy, deposed from the office of the priesthood and expelled by Bishop Aëtius. He fled into a part of Arabia, where there was a center of Ebionitism.
Exploring the didactic potential of the moving image, Hartung’s moving images analyze the creation and dissemination of cultural narratives through entertainment. Often taking the major themes of modernism as his subject matter, his work has addressed colonial expansion and exploration, evolution, conquest, and innovation. The montages of stop motion animation and found footage explore trauma, mortality, ethics and war. Drawing upon a diverse range of sources, including Chelsea Manning's court testimony, BBC documentaries, Anna Karenina, the Gnostic gospels, and the 1967 classic coming-of-age novel The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, Hartung experiments with the history of film and video and the conventions of narrative, fragmenting and deconstructing his source material.
9:12 Paul further confirms the economic, or literal, aspect by speaking of the collection as making up for "the deficiencies of the saints". E. Stanley Jones, '"Ebionites", in Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, Amsterdam University Press, 2000 p. 364. The actual number of sects described as Ebionites is difficult to ascertain, as the contradictory patristic accounts in their attempt to distinguish various sects sometimes confuse them with each other. Other sects mentioned are the Carpocratians, the Cerinthians, the Elcesaites, the fourth century Nazarenes and the Sampsaeans, most of whom were Jewish Christian sects who held gnostic or other views rejected by the Ebionites.
What appeared a natural target of satire for the author of Ed was instead a continuing attempt of Brown's to find what he really believed, having been raised a Christian Baptist. The adaptations later continued with the Gospel of Matthew and the apocryphal "The Twin" from the Gnostic text Pistis Sophia, and Brown went through periods of agnosticism and Gnosticism. The offensive content of Ed caused it to be dropped by one printer, and is suspected to be behind Diamond Comic Distributors' decision to stop distributing Yummy Fur starting with issue #9. After The Comics Journal announced they would be investigating the issue, Diamond started distributing it again.
Davies (2009:7) The ancient Jewish people were often viewed as being knowledgeable in magic, which, according to legend, they had learned from Moses, who had learned it in Egypt. Among many ancient writers, Moses was seen as an Egyptian rather than a Jew. Two manuscripts likely dating to the 4th century, both of which purport to be the legendary eighth Book of Moses (the first five being the initial books in the Biblical Old Testament), present him as a polytheist who explained how to conjure gods and subdue demons. Meanwhile, there is definite evidence of grimoires being used by certain, particularly Gnostic, sects of early Christianity.
Many Nag Hammadi texts, including, for example, the Prayer of Paul and the Coptic Apocalypse of Paul, consider Paul to be "the great apostle". The fact that he claimed to have received his gospel directly by revelation from God appealed to the gnostics, who claimed gnosis from the risen Christ. The Naassenes, Cainites, and Valentinians referred to Paul's epistles. Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy have expanded upon this idea of Paul as a gnostic teacher;Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries, 1999 although their premise that Jesus was invented by early Christians based on an alleged Greco-Roman mystery cult has been dismissed by scholars.
According to Michael Allen Williams, the concept of Gnosticism as a distinct religious tradition is questionable, since "gnosoi" was a pervasive characteristics of many religious traditions in antiquity, and not restricted to the so-called Gnostic systems. According to Williams, the conceptual foundations on which the category of Gnosticism rests are the remains of the agenda of the heresiologists. The early church heresiologists created an interpretive definition of Gnosticism, and modern scholarship followed this example and created a categorical definition. According to Williams the term needs replacing to more accurately reflect those movements it comprises, and suggests to replace it with the term "the Biblical demiurgical tradition".
While Stade complemented Lessing on the book's satire, and her depictions of Zone 6, which he said "have the eerie beauty of ancient Gnostic texts", he "disapprove[d]" of the novel as a whole, but added, "that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy reading it". Witing in the Los Angeles Times. M. G. Lord called Shikasta an "epic" and suspected that it may have influenced the Nobel committee when they referred to Lessing as an "epicist of the female experience". Thelma J. Shinn wrote in her book, Worlds Within Women: Myth and Mythmaking in Fantastic Literature by Women, that Lessing's history of humanity in Shikasta is "pessimistic" but "convincing".
According to E. S. Drower, the Mandaean Gnosis is characterized by nine features, which appear in various forms in other gnostic sects: # A supreme formless Entity, the expression of which in time and space is creation of spiritual, etheric, and material worlds and beings. Production of these is delegated by It to a creator or creators who originated It. The cosmos is created by Archetypal Man, who produces it in similitude to his own shape. # Dualism: a cosmic Father and Mother, Light and Darkness, Right and Left, syzygy in cosmic and microcosmic form. # As a feature of this dualism, counter-types, a world of ideas.
Justin suggested that Menander was born in Cappareteia and established a school in Antioch where he announced himself the messiah and vowed to defeat the angels that were keeping the world in captivity, possibly through exorcism. When the Simonians divided during the Gnostic schism, Menander called his part of the sect Menandrians, holding the belief that the world was made by angels. His ideas contrasted with those of Saturninus of Antioch and the Satornilians, who believed the world was made by only seven angels against the will of a "Father on high". Menander held that a water baptism was essential as the source for eternal youth.
Evagrius Ponticus, also called Evagrius the Solitary (345–399 AD) was a highly educated monastic teacher who produced a large theological body of work, mainly ascetic, including the Gnostikos (, gnōstikos, "learned", from γνῶσις, gnōsis, "knowledge"), also known as The Gnostic: To the One Made Worthy of Gnosis. The Gnostikos is the second volume of a trilogy containing the Praktikos, intended for young monks to achieve apatheia, i. e. "a state of calm which is the prerequisite for love and knowledge", in order to purify their intellect and make it impassible, to reveal the truth hidden in every being. The third book, Kephalaia Gnostika, was meant for meditation by advanced monks.
In February 1936 they held a Mass in honour of Wayne Walker, a proponent of New Thought who ran a group known as The Voice of Healing; they had hoped to attract Walker and his supporters to Thelema, but they were put off by the Lodge's sexual openness. Later that year, Smith and Jacobi's employer, the Southern California Gas Company, discovered their involvement in the Lodge, demoting Smith to bookkeeper and firing Jacobi. Angered, Jacobi left the Lodge altogether, while Smith shut down the group's private ritual activities for the next three years. As a result, the public attendance of the Gnostic Mass plummeted.
Activities picked up again when Kahl, who worked as a drama teacher, brought three of her interested students into the group, among them Phyllis Seckler, and other individuals also joined the group, among them Louis T. Culling and Roy Leffingwell. However, the rising number of members caused schisms and arguments, and the Lodge again ceased its private activities from March 1940 to March 1941. They returned to their activities to initiate a couple who had become interested in the O.T.O. through attending the Gnostic Mass, rocket scientist Jack Parsons and his wife Helen. Parsons became enamored with Thelema, although initially expressed both "repulsion and attraction" for Smith.
The epistles contain philosophical discourses about Neoplatonic and Gnostic subjects, Ptolemaic cosmology, Arabic paraphrases of the philosophies of Farabi, Plotinus and Proclus, writings on the Universal Soul along with several polemic epistles concerning other faiths and philosophies that were present during that time and towards individuals who were considered renegades or those who tried to distort and tarnish the reputation of the faith and its teachings such as the "Answering the Nusayri" epistle and the fifth volume of the Epistles. Most of the Epistles are written in a post- classical language, often showing similarities to Arab Christian authors.Conférences de M. Daniel De Smet., Université Catholique de Louvain, p.
Clement confirms that Mark wrote a second, longer, mystic and more spiritual version of his gospel, and that this gospel was "very securely kept" in the Alexandrian church, but that it contained no such words. Clement accuses the heterodox teacher Carpocrates for having obtained a copy by deceit and then polluted it with "utterly shameless lies". To refute the teachings of the gnostic sect of Carpocratians, known for their sexual libertarianism, and to show that these words were absent in the true Secret Gospel of Mark, Clement quoted two passages from it. There were accordingly three versions of Mark known to Clement, Original Mark, Secret Mark, and Carpocratian Mark.
In a tribute to Roman craftsmanship, when the tomb was opened, the stone door easily swung on its stone hinges. Very near to the tomb, a Roman theatre was discovered, so well preserved that the metal joints between the seats were still intact. A dissertation published in 1987 claims that St. Paul, on his way from Palestine to Rome in AD 59, was shipwrecked and confined for three months not on Malta but on Cephalonia.Loggerhead Turtles In Agnes Seppelfricke: Paulus war nie auf Malta According to Clement of Alexandria, the island had the largest community of Carpocratians, an early Gnostic Christian sect, because Carpocrates lived on the island.
The sect were a sub-group of the Borborians,R. Bruce Elder - of which the Coddians, Stratiotici and the Phibiomites had together a family connection to Gnostics.review by Dr. Joseph S. Maresca of The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics: An Introduction to the Gnostic Coptic Manuscripts Discovered at Chenoboskion by Jean Doresse New York : MJF Books, 1986. Retrieved 2011-October-21 Kurt Rudolph - GNOSIS: The Nature and History of Gnosticism - 412 pages , Continuum International Publishing Group, 1 Jun 1998 quoting Epiphanius of Salamis - ©T & T Clark Ltd 1983 Retrieved 2012-01-14 The name deriving from stratos which in the Greek language meant army,Douglas Harper - Behindthename.
After the erection of the basilica over her remains and those of Sts. Nereus and Achilleus in the 4th century, her cult extended widely and her name was therefore admitted later into the martyrology. A legend, the existence of which in the 6th century is proved by its presence in the list of the tombs of the Roman martyrs prepared by Abbot John at the end of this century,De Rossi, Roma sotterranea, I, 180 regards Petronilla as a real daughter of Saint Peter. In the Gnostic apocryphal Acts of St. Peter, dating from the 2nd century, a daughter of St. Peter is mentioned, although her name is not given.
Pilgermann is a historical fantasy which deals with the relationship between Judaism, Christianity and Islam. At the time of the book's setting Islam was the most technologically and culturally advanced of the three cultures and this is reflected in the comparatively sympathetic portrayal of Bembel and Muslim society as opposed to the brutality and hardship of European, Christian life. The book is suffused with Kabbalistic, Sufi and Christian mystical imagery, including references to the Tarot, the work of artists such as Brueghel and Bosch, the Gnostic idea of the Sophia and many others. The European scenes are often reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman's film The Seventh Seal.
The Life of Adam and Eve is also important in the study of the early Seth traditions.A. Frederik, J. Klijn Seth in Jewish, Christian and Gnostic Literature (1977) pag 16ff Interesting parallels can be found with some New Testament passages, such as the mention of the Tree of Life in . The more striking resemblances are with ideas in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians: Eve as the source of sin (), Satan disguising himself as an angel of light (), the location of the paradise in the third heaven (). In addition, there are parallels between Christ's forty days in the desert and Adam and Eve's forty days in the rivers.
136 relates one Gnostic group's teachings of the transfigured Jesus to the assembled disciples, including his mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Martha. (In this context, "transfigured" refers to Jesus after his death and resurrection, not the event during his life where he spoke to appearances of Moses and Elijah on a mountain.) In this text, the risen Jesus had spent eleven years speaking with his disciples, teaching them only the lower mysteries. After eleven years, he receives his true garment and is able to reveal the higher mysteries revered by this group. The prized mysteries relate to complex cosmologies and knowledge necessary for the soul to reach the highest divine realms.
Cosmology is a primary focus of the Pistis Sophia – learning the structure of the universe and how to traverse it is considered key in these texts, and the cosmology is one of the most complex from any Gnostic text remaining today. Summarizing the cosmology is further complicated because the structure is slightly different in each of its separate books, with certain realms added and removed. Some scholars have suggested cosmologies encompassing the entirety of the codex;C. Schmidt, Gnostische Schriften in koptischer Sprache aus dem Codex Brucianus (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1892), 347-348.G.R.S. Mead, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten (1905; reprint: New York: University Books, 1960), 574-575.
The story of Pistis Sophia's fall and restoration (chapters 29-82) dominates much of Books 1 & 2\. She dwells in the thirteenth aeon, is tricked into leaving her aeon and descending into Chaos, has her light-power stolen, and is not allowed to return to her place until Jesus ascends through the aeons. She recites many repentances and prayers, and is repeatedly persecuted by wicked archontic beings before being allowed to wait just outside of the thirteenth aeon for restoration. It is noteworthy that she is not a divine being, as portrayed in other versions of the Gnostic myth such as the Apocryphon of John.
This is the demiurge of these texts. Jeu dwells in the Treasury of Light and organizes the cosmos. He places the archons and the aeons in their proper places, and assigns powers to the planets, effectively offering a divine origin for astrology. This is particularly noteworthy given the anti-cosmic nature of some other Gnostic groups. He is sometimes referred to as the “Father of Jesus’ Father.” Jeu is considered the father of the Great Sabaoth, the Good, who provides the soul to Jesus’ earthly incarnation – thus Jeu is the father of Jesus’ earthly father. The divine Jesus’ true father remains the highest, ineffable God.
Retrieved 2013-05-22 Ibn Umayl has been considered a Gnostic Hermetist who seems to have led an introverted life style, which he recommended to others in his writings.fol. 2f.p. XIII. Statements in his writings, comparing the Alchemical oven with Egyptian temples suggest that he might have lived for some time in Akhmim, the former centre of Alchemy. He also quoted alchemists that had lived in Egypt: Zosimos of Panopolis and Dhul-Nun al-Misri. In later European literature, ibn Umayl became known by a number of names: his title Sheikh become 'senior' by translation into Latin, the honorific al-sadik rendered phonetically as 'Zadith'Julius Ruska, Senior Zadith = Ibn Umail.
The Basilidians or Basilideans were a Gnostic sect founded by Basilides of Alexandria in the 2nd century. Basilides claimed to have been taught his doctrines by Glaucus, a disciple of St. Peter, though others stated he was a disciple of the Simonian Menander. Of the customs of the Basilidians, we know no more than that Basilides enjoined on his followers, like Pythagoras, a silence of five years; that they kept the anniversary of the day of the baptism of Jesus as a feast dayClement, Stromata. i. 21 § 18 and spent the eve of it in reading; that their master told them not to scruple eating things offered to idols.
Mark's gospel is of astral magical, > Gnostic origin from the middle of the second century... Drews had published > an introduction to astral mythology in the cultures of the Mediterranean and > Iranian region up to imperial times, in order to decrease the above > ignorance. But theologians continued to indulge in their self-induced > ignorance. [emphasis added] In his 1924 book The Origin of Christianity in Gnosticism, Drews developed the hypothesis of the derivation of Christianity from a gnosticism environment. In Drews's own words (in Klaus Schilling's "English Summary" of The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus): > Gnosticism is undeniably pre-Christian, with both Jewish and gentile roots.
Early texts such as the Didache (in 2nd- millennium copies) and the Gospel of Thomas (in two manuscripts dated as early as about 200 and 340) have been rediscovered in the last 200 years. The Didache, from the 1st century, provides insight into the Jewish Christians of the Jerusalem church. The Gospel of Thomas apparently reflects the beliefs of 1st-century, proto-gnostic Christians in Syria. In the 20th century, scholars became more likely to see early Christian faith and practice as evolving out of the religious beliefs and practices of Second Temple Judaism and Hellenic pagans, rather than standing out in sharp contrast to them.
In his discussion of one of the earliest pagan parchment codices to survive from Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, Eric Turner seems to challenge Skeat's notion when stating "its mere existence is evidence that this book form had a prehistory" and that "early experiments with this book form may well have taken place outside of Egypt". Early intact codices were discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt. Consisting of primarily Gnostic texts in Coptic, the books were mostly written on papyrus, and while many are single-quire, a few are multi-quire. Codices were a significant improvement over papyrus or vellum scrolls in that they were easier to handle.
Engraving depicting Maria Prophetissima from Michael Maier's book Symbola Aurea Mensae Duodecim Nationum (1617). Mary or Maria the Jewess, also known as Mary the Prophetess (), is an early alchemist who is known from the works of the Gnostic Christian writer Zosimos of Panopolis. On the basis of Zosimos's comments, she lived between the first and third centuries A.D.Chemical History Tour, Picturing Chemistry from Alchemy to Modern Molecular Science Adele Droblas Greenberg Wiley-Interscience 2000 French, Taylor and Lippmann list her as one of the first alchemical writers, dating her works at no later than the first century.Taylor, F. Sherwood. “A Survey of Greek Alchemy”.
The Hymn of the Pearl (also Hymn of the Soul, Hymn of the Robe of Glory or Hymn of Judas Thomas the Apostle) is a passage of the apocryphal Acts of Thomas. In that work, originally written in Syriac, the Apostle Thomas sings the hymn while praying for himself and fellow prisoners. Some scholars believe the hymn antedates the Acts, as it only appears in one Syriac manuscript and one Greek manuscript of the Acts of Thomas. The author of the Hymn is unknown, though there is a belief that it was composed by the Syriac gnostic Bardaisan due to some parallels between his life and that of the hymn.
Scholars disagree whether Paul wrote the "Deutero-Pauline epistles" and whether Simon Peter wrote First Epistle of Peter; all other New Testament books that mention an author are most likely forgeries. In the 2nd century, the gnostics often claimed that their form of Christianity was the first, and they regarded Jesus as a teacher, or allegory. Elaine Pagels has proposed that there are several examples of gnostic attitudes in the Pauline epistles. Bart D. Ehrman and Raymond E. Brown note that some of the Pauline epistles are widely regarded by scholars as pseudonymous, Scholars who hold to Pauline authorship include Wohlenberg, Lock, Meinertz, Thornell, Schlatter, Spicq, Jeremais, Simpson, Kelly, and Fee.
The mainstream Hindu social class in traditional Vedic culture is the functionary priesthood, and includes teachers and scribes as well as medical practitioners. Those Brahmanas who tend to be theonomous in nature but who relate to Deity more as the absolute Self in its wise or gnostic capacity may be called Brahma-vadis, meaning practitioners of Brahma-vada, the endorsement of Brahma-tattva. Brahmanas and Yogis (deeply meditative saints) who are more progressively theolatrous, whether exoterically or esoterically, may be called Paramatma-vadis. Their relationship with the Deity advances beyond theoretical knowledge of Self into the dynamics of what may be called absolute civilization.
Donna Seaman reviewing in Booklist writes, it is "a compulsively readable saga and dramatic critique of capital punishment". Seaman compares Change of Heart to The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, describing the novel as, "Laced with intriguing musings on the Gnostic Gospels, Picoult's bold story of loss, justice, redemption, and faith reminds us how tragically truth can be concealed and denied." Janet Maslin writing for The New York Times had several criticisms of the book. Maslin wrote that Picoult wrote the novel on "authorial autopilot", as it has the "subtlety of a jackhammer" and was made needlessly long by scenes such as Maggie chatting with her pet rabbit.
Set in the late 1960s and 1970s, the story describes the efforts of Episcopal Bishop Timothy Archer, who must cope with the theological and philosophical implications of the newly discovered Gnostic Zadokite scroll fragments. The character of Bishop Archer is loosely based on the controversial, iconoclastic Episcopal Bishop James Pike, who in 1969 died of exposure while exploring the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea in the West Bank. As the novel opens, it is 1980. On the day that John Lennon is shot and killed, Angel Archer visits the houseboat of Edgar Barefoot, (a guru based on Alan Watts), and reflects on the lives of her deceased relatives.
Ringed cross The Celtic cross, a common type of ringed cross Sun cross/Earth astrological symbol A Cruciform halo The original Gnostic/Coptic cross Cross of Novgorod The ringed cross is a class of Christian cross symbols featuring a ring or nimbus. The concept exists in many variants and dates to early in the history of Christianity. One variant, the cruciform halo, is a special type of halo placed behind the head of Jesus in Christian art. Other common variants include the Celtic cross, used in the stone high crosses of Ireland and Britain; some forms of the Coptic cross; and ringed crosses from western France and Galicia.
134–138 (German edition: Rowohlt Verlag, 1990, ) Rittelmeyer and the other founders were inspired by Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian philosopher and founder of anthroposophy.Friedrich Rittelmeyer, Rudolf Steiner Enters My Life, The community has its historical roots partially in the broader liberal Christian tradition, and partially in the esoteric and gnostic tradition as well as German new humanism; while inspired by anthroposophy, Steiner emphasized that The Christian Community was a separate movement founded by Rittelmeyer, and most anthroposophists are not members of The Christian Community. Christian Community congregations exist as financially independent groups with regional and international administrative bodies overseeing their work. There are approximately 100,000 worldwide.
Cerdo () was a Syrian gnostic who was deemed a heretic by the Early Church around the time of his teaching, circa 138 AD. Cerdo started out as a follower of Simon Magus, like Basilides and Saturninus, and taught at about the same time as Valentinus, Marcion and them. According to Irenaeus, he was a contemporary of the Roman bishop Hyginus, residing in Rome as a prominent member of the Church until his forced expulsion therefrom. He taught that there were two gods, one that demanded obedience while the other was good and merciful. According to Cerdo, the former was the God of the Old Testament who had created the world.
This is the Solar lion and the > emblem of the Solar cycle, as Garuda is that of the great cycle, the "Maha- > Kalpa" co-eternal with Vishnu, and also, of course, the emblem of the Sun, > and Solar cycle. ... As well remarked by C. W. King: — "Whatever the primary > meaning (of the gem with the solar lion and vowels) it was probably imported > in its present shape from India, that true fountain head of gnostic > iconography." (Gnostics, p. 218) In the third volume of the Secret Doctrine, published posthumously, Blavatsky described the "Seven Primeval Rays" as a group of celestial beings also known as "Gods" or "Angels" or "Powers".
New Testament apocrypha—books similar to those in the New Testament but almost universally rejected by Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants—include several gospels and lives of apostles. Some were written by early Jewish Christians (see the Gospel according to the Hebrews). Others of these were produced by Gnostic authors or members of other groups later defined as heterodox. Many texts believed lost for centuries were unearthed in the 19th and 20th centuries, producing lively speculation about their importance in early Christianity among religious scholars, while many others survive only in the form of quotations from them in other writings; for some, no more than the title is known.
He studied at the Lycée Voltaire and at the Ecole Normale Israélite Orientale, where he was greatly influenced by its principal, Emmanuel Levinas, who taught him philosophy and Talmud. After briefly studying economics and law at the University of Paris, he moved to Israel. For his B.A. (1969), he studied philosophy and Jewish thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After his military service (1969–1972), he studied for the PhD in the Study of Religion at Harvard University. After the submission of his doctoral dissertation (1978) which dealt with Gnostic mythology, he was appointed a lecturer in the Department of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University.
The protocanonical books are those books of the Old Testament that are also included in the Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh) and that came to be considered canonical during the formational period of orthodox Christianity. The Old Testament is entirely rejected by some forms of Gnostic Christianity, but the Hebrew Bible was adhered to even more tightly by Jewish Christians than Gentile Christians. The term protocanonical is often used to contrast these books to the deuterocanonical books or apocrypha, which "were sometimes doubted"Old Testament of Douay, Vol. 1, Proemial Annotations, 1635 by some in the early church, and are considered non-canonical by most Protestants.
The German mystical alchemist Heinrich Khunrath wrote of the shape-changing sea-god who, because of his relationship to the sea, is both a symbol of the unconscious as well as the perfection of the art. Alluding to the scintilla, the spark from ‘the light of nature’ and symbol of the anima mundi, Khunrath in Gnostic vein stated of the Protean element Mercury: In modern times, the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung defined the mythological figure of Proteus as a personification of the unconscious, who, because of his gift of prophecy and shape-changing, has much in common with the central but elusive figure of alchemy, Mercurius.
Other commentators say his philosophy ended up resembling those of Valentinus, if not adhering to them completely. Epiphanius of Salamis and Bar Hebraeus assert that he was first an orthodox Christian and afterwards an adept of Valentinus. As a gnostic, he certainly denied the resurrection of the body, and so far as we can judge by the obscure quotations from his hymns furnished by Ephrem he explained the origin of the world by a process of emanation from the supreme God whom he called the Father of the Living. His teachings formed the basis of the Manichaeism and later of the batini sects of Shia Islam.
The sultans of Delhi, who were of Turko-Afghan origin, modeled their lifestyles after the Persian upper classes. They patronized Persian literature and music, but became especially notable for their architecture, because their builders drew from Irano-Islamic architecture, combining it with Indian traditions to produce a profusion of mosques, palaces, and tombs unmatched in any other Islamic country. The speculative thought of the times at the Mughal court, as in other Persianate courts, leaned towards the eclectic gnostic dimension of Sufi Islam, having similarities with Hindu Vedantism, indigenous Bhakti and popular theosophy. The Mughals, who were of Turco-Mongol descent, strengthened the Indo-Persian culture, in South Asia.
Jung's own 'gnostic hymn', the Septem Sermones ad Mortuos (The Seven Sermons to the Dead), would tend to imply the latter, but after circulating the manuscript, Jung declined to publish it during his lifetime. Since it is not clear whether Jung was ultimately displeased with the book or whether he merely suppressed it as too controversial, the issue remains contested. Uncertain too are Jung's belief that the gnostics were aware of and intended psychological meaning or significance within their myths. On the other hand, it is clear from a comparison of Jung's writings and that of ancient Gnostics, that Jung disagreed with them on the ultimate goal of the individual.
In many Gnostic systems, the various emanations of God, who is also known by such names as the One, the Monad, Aion teleos ( "The Broadest Aeon"), Bythos ("depth or profundity", Greek ), Proarkhe ("before the beginning", Greek ), the Arkhe ("the beginning", Greek ), "Sophia" (wisdom), Christos (the Anointed One) are called Aeons. In the different systems these emanations are differently named, classified, and described, but the emanation theory itself is common to all forms of Gnosticism. In the Basilidian Gnosis they are called sonships (υἱότητες huiotetes; sing.: huiotes); according to Marcus, they are numbers and sounds; in Valentinianism they form male/female pairs called "syzygies" (Greek , from σύζυγοι syzygoi).
The Gospel of Philip is one of the Gnostic Gospels, a text of New Testament apocrypha, dated to around the 3rd century but lost in medieval times until rediscovered by accident, buried with other texts near Nag Hammadi in Egypt, in 1945."Rivals of Jesus," National Geographic Channel (2006). The text is not closely related to the canonical gospels and is not accepted as canonical by the Christian church. Although it may have some relationship to the beliefs expressed in the Gospel of Thomas, scholars are divided as to whether it should be read as a single discourse or as a collection of otherwise unrelated Valentinian sayings.
The development of Bogomillism Bogomilism (Bulgarian and ; / Богумилство) was a Christian neo-Gnostic or dualist sect founded in the First Bulgarian Empire by the priest Bogomil during the reign of Tsar Peter I in the 10th century. It most probably arose in what is today the region of Macedonia. The Bogomils called for a return to what they considered to be early spiritual teaching, rejecting the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and their primary political tendencies were resistance to the state and church authorities. This helped the movement spread quickly in the Balkans, gradually expanding throughout the Byzantine Empire and later reaching Kievan Rus', Bosnia (Bosnian Church), Dalmatia, Serbia, Italy, and France (Cathars).
The religious distribution at the time of the East–West Schism, showing Bogomils concentrated in the Balkans. The Gnostic social-religious movement and doctrine originated in the time of Peter I of Bulgaria (927-969), alleged in the modern day to be a reaction against state and clerical oppression of the Byzantine church. In spite of all measures of repression, it remained strong and popular until the fall of the Second Bulgarian Empire in the end of the 14th century. Bogomilism was an outcome of many factors that had arisen in the beginning of the 10th century, most probably in the region of Macedonia.
Parsons came to believe in the reality of Thelemic magick as a force that could be explained through quantum physics. He tried to interest his friends and acquaintances in Thelema, taking science fiction writers Jack Williamson and Cleve Cartmill to a performance of The Gnostic Mass. Although they were unimpressed, Parsons was more successful with Grady Louis McMurtry, a young Caltech student he had befriended, as well as McMurtry's fiancée Claire Palmer, and Helen's sister Sara "Betty" Northrup. Grady McMurtry was recruited into the O.T.O. by Parsons. Jack and Helen were initiated into the Agape Lodge, the renamed Church of Thelema, in February 1941.
Notable persons influenced by Mead include Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats, Hermann Hesse, Kenneth Rexroth, and Robert Duncan. The seminal influence of G.R.S. Mead on Carl Gustav Jung, confirmed by the scholar of Gnosticism Gilles Quispel, a friend of Jung's, has been documented by several scholars. The popularity of a 20th-century Theosophical or esoteric interpretation of "gnosis" and the "Gnostics" led to an influential conception among scholars of an essential doctrinal and practising commonality among the various groups deemed "Gnostic," which has been criticised by scholars such as Michael Allen Williams in his book Rethinking Gnosticism and by Karen L. King in recent decades.
His magnum opus has many analyses of economy, culture, language, art, demography... In 1989 Brandt wrote a large book called Sources of Evil: Dualist Themes, where he collected many older works he had read at international or local conferences. It is a book of ideas, clearly showing the author's interest for gnostic and dualist currents in the history of religions. It includes a detailed analysis of Biblical books (Genesis, Ecclesiastes), a careful examination of the Toltec religion, Wycliffe's heresy, and local heretical movements in Dalmatia and Bosnia, especially the phenomenon of the Bosnian Church. As for other larger history works, there is Brandt's book on the Kievan Rus'.
Acts of Paul consists of the third letter to the Corinthians, an account of his martyrdom, and other narratives depicting his preaching and activity. There is a range of literature either about or purporting to be by Paul, including letters, narratives, prayers, and apocalypses. The pseudonymous Third Letter to the Corinthians claims to have been written from prison to correct the misinterpretations that his first and second letter had created. In his first letter to the Corinthians, he stated that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" and this statement is related to the debates that ensued between the Gnostic and proto-orthodox Christians thereafter.
The Book of Thomas the Contender, also known more simply as the Book of Thomas (not to be confused with the Gospel of Thomas), is one of the books of the New Testament apocrypha represented in the Nag Hammadi library (CG II), a cache of Gnostic gospels secreted in the Egyptian desert. The title derives from the first line of text. :"The secret words that the savior spoke to Judas Thomas which I, even I, Mathaias, wrote down, while I was walking, listening to them speak with one another." The colophon appended to the text gives the title The Contender writing to the Perfect.
And the darkness rose for you > like the light, for you surrendered your freedom for servitude! You darkened > your hearts and surrendered your thoughts to folly, and you filled your > thoughts with the smoke of the fire that is in you! (Book of Thomas the > Contender) The gnostic content in the texts of the Nag Hammadi trove can be argued to be often identical to Jesus' conceptual content, but the metaphorical language and symbolism are strikingly different. "The Book of Thomas the Contender" and its guidance in overcoming ego "lusts/attachments" differs markedly with Jesus' gentler, more practical psychological approach in the four canonical Gospels and the Gospel of Thomas.
Scholem gives a variety of examples of such borrowings. The Zohar draws upon early mystical texts such as the Sefer Yetzirah and the Bahir, and the early medieval writings of the Hasidei Ashkenaz. Another influence on the Zohar that Scholem, and scholars like Yehudah Liebes and Ronit Meroz have identified was a circle of Spanish Kabbalists in Castile who dealt with the appearance of an evil side emanating from within the world of the sephirot. Scholem saw this dualism of good and evil within the Godhead as a kind of "gnostic" inclination within Kabbalah, and as a predecessor of the Sitra Ahra (the other, evil side) in the Zohar.
Agape Lodge No. 1, founded by Wilfred Smith in 1935, was based in Hollywood, and initially had 7 initiates to the Minerval level. The lodge held regular meetings, lectures, and study classes, as well as social events and a weekly Gnostic Mass open to the public. On the 6th of June 1939 Seckler, and other individuals who attended drama classes, including Louis T. Culling and Roy Leffingwell were brought in by Regina Kahl who worked as a drama teacher. Kahl was a drama teacher at Los Angeles City College and the program was under the auspices of the W.P.A. to put people to work during the depression years.
Some of Aleister Crowley's remarks appear to indicate that Crowley identified the Great White Brotherhood with the A∴A∴, his magical secret society.Crowley, A. Liber ABA, book 4. part 3, appendix II; a/k/a Magick in Theory and Practice (Sangreal, 1969). Bulgarian Gnostic master Peter Deunov referred to his organization of followers as the Universal White Brotherhood, and it is clear that he too was referring to the Western esoteric community-at-large. When ex-communicated as a heretic on 7 July 1922, he defended the Brotherhood as follows: > ‘Let the Orthodox Church resolve this issue, whether Christ has risen, > whether Love is accepted in the Orthodox Church.
The Marcionites believed that the visible world is an evil creation of a crude, cruel, jealous, angry demiurge, Yahweh. According to this teaching, people should oppose him, abandon his world, not create people, and trust in the good God of mercy, foreign and distant.H. Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, Boston: Beacon Press, 1958, pp. 144–145.P. Karavites, Evil, Freedom, and the Road to Perfection in Clement of Alexandria, Leiden: Brill, 1999, p. 94.Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, Books 1–3 (The Fathers of the Church, volume 85), Washington D.C.: CUA Press, 2010, pp. 263–271.
The themes and content of the psalms bear a considerable resemblance to the Hymn of the Pearl from the Acts of Thomas. In 1949 Torgny Save-Soderbergh suggested that the psalms were largely based upon canonical Mandaean texts (despite Jesus being mentioned positively in two psalms), his work on the psalms demonstrating that Mandaeism did not derive from Manichaeism, as was formerly commonly believed.Save-Soderbergh, Torgny, Studies in the Coptic Manichaean Psalm-book, 1949. Nevertheless, considerable controversy continues as to whether the Thomas or Thom referred to could be the Apostle Thomas, Mani's disciple, also called Thomas, or the Gnostic concept of the divine twin.
The Gnostic Gospel of Philip tells that Jesus "kissed her often" and refers to Mary as his "companion". Several sources from the 13th-century claim that an aspect of Catharist theology was the belief that the earthly Jesus had a familial relationship with Mary Magdalene. An Exposure of the Albigensian and Waldensian Heresies, dated to before 1213 and usually attributed to Ermengaud of Béziers, a former Waldensian seeking reconciliation with the mainstream Catholic Church, would describe Cathar heretical beliefs including the claim that they taught "in the secret meetings that Mary Magdalen was the wife of Christ". A second work, untitled and anonymous, repeats Ermengaud's claim.
An anointing oil mentioned in Exodus is, by some translators, said to contain Cannabis. Sufis have used Cannabis in a spiritual context since the 13th century CE. In modern times, the Rastafari movement has embraced Cannabis as a sacrament. Elders of the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church, a religious movement founded in the United States in 1975 with no ties to either Ethiopia or the Coptic Church, consider Cannabis to be the Eucharist, claiming it as an oral tradition from Ethiopia dating back to the time of Christ. Like the Rastafari, some modern Gnostic Christian sects have asserted that Cannabis is the Tree of Life.
Historians of the 19th century invented the term Neoplatonism and applied it to Plotinus and his philosophy, which was influential during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Much of the biographical information about Plotinus comes from Porphyry's preface to his edition of Plotinus' Enneads. His metaphysical writings have inspired centuries of Pagan, Jewish, Christian, Gnostic, and Islamic metaphysicians and mystics, including developing precepts that influence mainstream theological concepts within religions, such as his work on duality of the One in two metaphysical states. This concept is similar to the Christian notion of Jesus being both God and man, a foundational idea in Christian theology.
Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) To counter the doctrines of the gnostic sects claiming secret wisdom, he offered three pillars of orthodoxy: the scriptures, the tradition handed down from the apostles, and the teaching of the apostles' successors."Caesar and Christ"(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972) Intrinsic to his writing is that the surest source of Christian guidance is the church of Rome, and he is the earliest surviving witness to regard all four of the now-canonical gospels as essential.Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New Testament, p. 14.
The prospect of making this incarnation of Kain playable left the development team "very excited", and was agreed upon very early in pre- production. Recognizing that he is "the most important character in the series", designer Kyle Mannerberg named several parallels and influences concerning his development up to that point, citing Neo and John Murdoch (the protagonists of The Matrix and Dark City respectively), the archetypal Fisher King of Arthurian legend, the story of Oedipus, and Gnostic myth as inspirations (with both latter sources being reaffirmed as strong influences by Hennig in a later interview). The spells he obtains over the course of his levels were intended to pay homage to the original Blood Omen.
The Codex Tchacos is an ancient Egyptian Coptic papyrus, which contains early Christian gnostic texts from approximately 300 AD: the Letter of Peter to Philip, the First Apocalypse of James, the Gospel of Judas, and a fragment of the Book of Allogenes (or the Book of the Stranger; this is different from the previously known Nag Hammadi text Allogenes). The Codex Tchacos is important, because it contains the first known surviving copy of the Gospel of Judas, a text that was rejected as heresy by the early Christian church and lost for 1700 years. The Gospel of Judas was mentioned and summarized by the Church Father Irenaeus of Lyons in his work Against Heresies.c. 180, Adv. Haer. 1.31.1.
Grant Morrison describes its origins as follows: "The word 'BARBELiTH' is derived from a dream I had when I was about 20 or 21 and coincided with my first structured 'magical' experiences and a minor nervous breakdown (in the dream, BARBELiTH was the name of some higher dimension or alternate reality)." Barbelith is inspired by the Philip K. Dick novel VALIS in which the titular satellite, VALIS, appears as a sort of Gnostic information-satellite for humanity. Perhaps of note, in Sethian gnosticism, the name of the first and highest emanation of the true God (as opposed to their description of the God of the Old Testament as Ialdabaoth or the demiurge) is called Barbelo.
In both The Gnostic Gospels and Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, Pagels focuses especially on the way that women have been viewed throughout Jewish and Christian history. Her other books include The Origin of Satan (1995), Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (2003), Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity (2007), and Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation (2012). In April 1987, Pagels's son Mark died after five years of illness, and in July 1988, her husband Heinz Pagels died in a mountain climbing accident. These personal tragedies deepened her spiritual awareness and afterwards Pagels began research leading to The Origin of Satan.
In any case, since flesh was susceptible to evil, he was merely a docetic being, and through his presence he would have passed the knowledge to overthrow the God of Jews, destroy the wicked, and make the sparks of life return to the Higher God. It is acknowledged that Saturninus was influenced by Zoroastrianism. The dualism between God and Satan would be similar to that of Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, while his seven angels would be similar to the Amesha Spenta. His demonization of the God of Jews, also done by his gnostic partners, might have been a consequence of the anti-Jewish sentiment caused among Christians and Romans by the Bar Kokhba revolt.

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